First and foremost, this is not music but it is very entertaining. Anyone that watches Hell’s Kitchen and plays witness to the hell (no pun intended) those contestants go through, you understand why when Siobhan Allgood was a prime candidate for our feature of the week.

If you were to cross Siobhan on the street, you would not know that you just passed greatness. Not the type of greatness that ones profession brings forward, or even that is given by right of birth. Her greatness is provided in the form of a person, and being a true hearted individual and one that has a great skill and passion for her craft that many will never have the chance to experience. She has also already obtained greatness in her life many will never achive because of what she has simply overcome to get where she has in life.

Siobhan Allgood was a contestant on Season 7 of “Hell’s Kitchen” until episode 8 where she was one of four put up for elimination. Ultimately her number was called and she was dismissed. “It was a great experience and a really great time”, Siobhan explains to me by telephone from her home in Pennsylvania. “The attitudes clash but we are mostly all friends even after the show” she explains.

Siobhan was raised in a broken home of divorced parents, and with an alcoholic mother that (as in most situations) under giving and becomes more involved with drinking than her child, Siobhan was left to fend on her own and basicly raise herself. She got tired of not having the nutrition that “you can’t just get out of a Campbell’s soup can” and decided she wanted to learn to cook. Self taught at approximately 14 years old, she started ‘Killing Chickens’ as she called it. “I feel so sorry for the massive number of chickens that I killed. Overcooked, undercooked, too spicy, wrong mix of spices, I screwed more chickens up attempting to cook them in a frying pan on a stove it is not even funny”, she explains, “It came to the point of either learn to cook for myself or eat out of a box”.

Through her trials and errors in the kitchen, she eventually became a cook. Not only just a cook but one of the top chef’s in North America. Siobhan excels in Baja Southern California cusine, and attributes that clash with French-Trained Chef Ramsey on Hell’s Kitchen. “Chef Ramsey is French-Trained and does not agree with the mix of ingredients that Baja food includes. Just because he did not like it does not mean it was bad, it was just his personal opinion”, she explained.

Her demise came in the show after another contestant, Ben Knack, seemed to have a grudge against Siobhan. It seemed since the moment he was moved to the red team, Ben and Siobhan hated each other. “He never liked me, never talked to me, never got to know me”, said Siobhan. “The sandwich incident was exactly that. Chef Ramsey told our team to choose a sandwich not to be judged and Ben immediately said Siobhan’s should not go”.

Siobhan was put up for elimination with Ben leading the charge to eliminate her when both teams “lost” the service challenge. She was placed along with 3 other people including 2 from the blue team. “I was shocked when Chef Ramsey said for me to hand him my jacket” she said.

“I can not wait till next weeks episode to see what he does to the next person”, she said. “I can not say who won at the end, but it was not at all who I thought it would be”.

Siobhan is off the show, but she says she is not going away anytime soon. “I have a couple irons in the fire… althought we are all still under contract with FOX”. She has a cookbook hopefully coming out later this year in her specialty area of Baja, and is currently providing private chef service Nationwide for various people. According to Siobhan, “I am trying to find a part-time job so that I can keep my options open, but am being told I am over-qualified or too expensive for the economy”.

We look forward to seeing what Siobhan has to offer in the future, and will keep track of her and report from time to time through ProjectBackstage.com on her progress of recovering from a reality show. Some people have great success after one, others, well…

Please visit http://www.siobhanallgood.com for more information on Siobhan. Project Backstage would also like to thank Christina Cook and Scantlin Entertainment for participating in the interview.

Frank Arena
ProjectBackstage.com