The Golden Ticket: Lee Anne Wong's Clogs

By: Sarah De Heer
lee anne wong's golden clogs

NIC5_Webisode

Rival Chef Lee Anne Wong getting ready to cook in Battle #2: Secret Ingredient Showdown "Peanuts" as seen on Food Network's Next Iron Chef, Redemption, Season 5.

Photo by: Nathaniel Chadwick/Creel Films ©2012, Television Food Network, G.P. All Rights Reserved

Nathaniel Chadwick/Creel Films, 2012, Television Food Network, G.P. All Rights Reserved

Chef Lee Anne Wong has successfully made it to the final round of the Road to Redemption Web-series battle and this past Friday, Chef Estes also advanced, too (relive her battle below).

Making one dish in 30 minutes can be tricky, especially when you don't know the ingredient in advance and the result has to be good enough to defeat your competitor. This was the situation for Chefs Wong and Cowan — both were seen running around Kitchen Stadium, gathering ingredients at record speeds. In between her mad dashes, viewers may have seen something shiny — Chef Wong's golden clogs, to be exact. They caught our eye, as well. We recently caught up with her and asked her to dish on her kicks.

Chef Wong: I found a store in Venice, Calif., that does custom clogs. I figured golden clogs were the way to go. I ordered them and ended up waiting more than a month for them to be shipped to me back in N.Y. The first time I wore them I was throwing a party with Joey Campanaro at the Little Owl Venue. Needless to say, they have become my favorite pair of clogs (because I have enough clogs to outfit an entire kitchen of cooks with really small feet). They are a little beaten and worn, so I may need to send them back to get the gold leather refinished.

How do you keep your feet from slipping out of them while you’re running around Kitchen Stadium?

Socks, baby. The soles of the shoes are wooden, like traditional Scandinavian clogs, so as you can imagine, it's taken a few years for the soles to sort of mold themselves to my feet.

Do you consider them your lucky charm?

Lucky charm? Maybe. I wear them when I'm ready to go into high gear in the kitchen. That's the objective. I'm moving so fast in the kitchen that all you can see is a flash of gold where my feet are, kinda like Wile E. Coyote. (The soft rubber clogs are for standing around in the same spot all day chopping vegetables or whatever.)

Find out which Web-series winner will join the nine returning rivals in Kitchen Stadium this Friday at FoodNetwork.com/NIC.

Round 2: Estes vs. Trevino
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