Chef Claudette Zepeda on Joining Bobby Flay’s New Competition Show

Forget the usual cooking competition. On Bobby Flay’s The Line, Food Network’s newest competition series, chefs from top restaurants go against Triple Threat’s Bobby Flay and his team to serve meals to diners who give feedback in real time. For chef Claudette Zepeda, who joins Flay’s team alongside fellow chef and Kitchen Undercover host Antonia Lofaso and chef Michael Jenkins, the high-pressure format offered something she hadn’t experienced before: the chance to test the full range of her culinary skills. Known for her bold Mexican flavors and equally bold personal style, Claudette brings a fearless approach to the competition.

In an interview with Food Network, she opens up about what it’s really like to work on the line — from the pressure of seeing live diner scores to the surprises that kept her team from ever getting too comfortable and why the experience ultimately made her realize, “There’s nothing I can’t do.”

In Conversation With Claudette

Food Network: How did the opportunity to join The Line come about?

Claudette Zepeda: Bobby had pitched The Line to me in a very top-level way years ago. And I was like, “Well, that’s great.” Not to be cynical, but I thought, “We’ll see what happens,” because I didn’t want to put my hopes and dreams in it before anything came to fruition. I just kind of put it in the back of my mind. It was years in coming and, when it did, everything Bobby had told me he wanted for the show came to be. And, of course, that’s the Flay way.

Food Network: What drew you to this show?

Claudette: Whenever Bobby calls me, I just say, “Yes, chef!” [laughs]. I think what drove me to say yes was the gift to explore my own abilities as a cook. That I was going to be able to show the world, but primarily myself, what I’m capable of doing when push comes to shove. Everyone expects me to just know Mexican food, just like everyone expects Antonia to just know Italian food, and Bobby to do Southwest and Michael as this technician who understands how to disassemble an animal. But for us to really show our true range — that’s what I was looking for. This was my shot to show all the things that I’ve accumulated over the last 25 years in cooking.

Food Network: How did you prepare yourself for being pushed outside your culinary comfort zone?

Claudette: There’s nothing you can really do to prepare for a show like this. You’re going to get uncomfortable, and the best thing you can do is live in the uncomfortable, just sit in it and not fight it, and not say, “Well, I don’t know how to do that.” We had to be comfortable with asking each other, for example, “Hey, what would you do with these two flavors?” When you have that back-and-forth with a team, where no one’s going to make you feel stupid for asking things, there’s nothing you need to prepare for. What you can prepare for is to be OK with being wrong and being OK with learning as you go along.

Food Network: Had you ever worked together as a team before?

Claudette: We had never actually cooked together on a line before. Bobby and I had done the show Bobby’s Triple Threat, Antonia and I had worked at the same culinary events and I met Michael for the first time on this show! And yet it felt like we had been working together for 20 years.

Food Network: Did you meet any of the opposing teams before the competition?

Claudette: Every time a team walked through the door, it was genuinely a surprise. A lot of us have some sort of familiarity with each other from other competitions or restaurants, but we did not know what team had been assembled.

Food Network: There were some stressful moments between the chefs and waitstaff. Was it difficult working with a staff you had never worked with before?

Claudette: Even the waitstaff you've worked with for years has their off days — just like chefs have their off days. It’s never personal. Sometimes we were frustrated in the moment, but those are the moments we catch ourselves and realize, “That wasn’t the end of the world.” There are all these show moments of humanity that, you know, run the gamut from calm to insanity because that is what our life is. At the end of each service, we high-five each other and go, “We’ll do better next time.”

Food Network: Did you find the constant stream of live diner scoring motivating or distracting?

Claudette: Michael was into it, but Michael loves sports. It’s like a basketball game. You’re seeing these live scores, points are moving up and down, and it’s literally down to the last score that really matters. But I found it so anxiety-inducing. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t need to know that I sucked! I needed to keep my head in the game. But with these live moments, the viewers get to see the ability we have to pivot and get better with every dish. And they also see the moments where we can’t change what the diner doesn’t like; where we just have to kind of take it on the chin and say, “Next time we know, no one likes this.”

Food Network: Were you free to choose your own menu, or were there guidelines that resulted in both teams serving similar dishes?

Claudette: We had no idea what we were going to serve ahead of time. All we’re given are the parameters of the style, the genre of culinary (Southeast Asian, American steakhouse), but everything else is happenstance. On several episodes, we did end up with the same or similar dishes, but that wasn’t something we knew was going to happen.

Food Network: Diners can choose the order in which they receive their dishes. Did that make service even more stressful?

Claudette: You know, in most dining experiences, you train your service staff to create the experience. The diner chooses their dishes, and then the server kind of lays it out: “OK, we’re going to have this for your first course, this for your second course.” Well, imagine the diner having all that control. It really made for quite a learning experience, and again, great television, because you’re going to see us sweat. We didn’t fully anticipate what that was going to feel like until we experienced it.

Food Network: You’ve built an incredibly broad skill set over the course of your career. What drove you to become such a versatile chef?

Claudette: Antonia and I have a soul-sister kinship that we had even before we worked together. She’s a few years ahead of me in the competition world, but we’re both single moms and we both have that same sense of needing to accumulate all these skills, like badges on our Girl Scout sash. From pastry to butchery to understanding artisanal bakery, I’ve accumulated these badges thus far in my career out of necessity. I was doing this to be able to feed my family. And I think all of us on The Line have always been able to maintain that level of humility and understanding that whatever it takes to get the job done, let’s just do it.

Food Network: What was it like finally walking out into the dining room and revealing yourselves?

Claudette: I have watched Bobby my whole career. When Iron Chef landed on Food Network, I was a senior in high school. I’ve seen his career ascend through the ages and how he has moved and plowed and weaved with trends and, you know, opening and closing restaurants and developing who he is as a cook. To walk out into the dining room and see so many people who genuinely have admiration for him, and to be part of his team was a moment where I was like, “Yeah, this is bigger than I thought it was. This is really special.”

Food Network: You’ve talked about the pressure of letting Bobby down. How much of that came from wanting to live up to his reputation?

Claudette: There’s a lot at stake professionally and personally with this show. The pressure was on us carrying a new show with a very new dynamic under Bobby’s roof — if you gave any less than 110%, it wasn’t only you who would be affected. I don’t ever want to let my chef down. I always want to be the person people can depend on. If they can’t call me, what does that say about me? And I think that’s what a team is. We came in with a good attitude and we all genuinely cared for each other at the end of it.

Food Network: Your cool glasses, long dangly earrings, hair bows and bold makeup are all part of the look we saw on The Line. How much does your personal style reflect who you are as a chef?

Claudette: It reflects 100% who I am. When I first started out in this industry, women had to look like men. We had to do the tight, high chignon bun. No makeup. And that is the antithesis of what being a Mexican woman is to me personally. I came up in an era where María Félix and Silvia Pinal and Frida Kahlo were living in the full embodiment of their Mexican eclectic style. So, imagine when I picked the one career where everyone tells me I shouldn’t do any of these things!

But I had a moment in my career where I said, “F that.” And I remember walking in [to a kitchen] with a red lip and dangly earrings and my hair half up, half down, and I was like, “Give me all of this chaotic energy because this is who I am. What you’re seeing is a woman who's completely sitting in her full Mexican eclectic self!”

Food Network: What’s the one great thing you took away from this competition?

Claudette: I’m not perfect, but the one thing that I took away from this experience is that there’s nothing I can’t do. I realized I can do everything that I set my mind to, and I can even surprise myself. That was the biggest gift this show gave me.

How to Watch Bobby Flay's The Line

Bobby Flay's The Line premieres Tuesday, September 8 at 9|8c on Food Network, following the Season 5 return of Bobby’s Triple Threat — which premieres Tuesday, August 25 at 8|7c. Both series will be available to stream the next day on HBO Max.

Follow Food Network’s social pages using #TheLine to go behind the scenes, tour the kitchen with Antonia and hear from visiting teams before they compete. To stay up to date on all things The Line, visit FoodNetwork.com.