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Sacramento culinary star gets a spot on ‘Chefs vs. Wild.’ He had 96 hours to forage a meal

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Kevin O’Connor’s culinary career took him from his home in rural El Dorado County to Michelin-starred Bay Area kitchens and back to the Sacramento region. Last fall, it took him into the Canadian wilderness.

O’Connor competed in the new Hulu show “Chefs vs. Wild,” which premiered Monday and will air his episode Oct. 3.

The show depicts O’Connor’s journey last fall of helicoptering to a remote island in British Columbia, pairing up with a survivalist and having 96 hours to forage and cook the main ingredients of a three-course meal. They had to feed themselves along the way, too.

Hulu’s “Chefs vs. Wild” debuted Sept. 26, 2022, and the episode featuring Sacramento chef Kevin O’Connor drops Oct. 3, 2022.
Hulu’s “Chefs vs. Wild” debuted Sept. 26, 2022, and the episode featuring Sacramento chef Kevin O’Connor drops Oct. 3, 2022.

O’Connor scrounged up oysters and sea urchins along the coast, picked mushrooms and beach peas and stumbled across a rogue apple tree, all while projecting a coolly confident air. In truth, the redheaded chef was battling a fever for the first three days, testing for COVID-19 every day but afraid to say anything about his condition out of fear he’d get kicked off the show.

Near-constant rain and temperatures in the 30s not only exacerbated his feverish misery, they turned trails to creeks, limited fire-building and made keeping a dry base layer an essential challenge. He would collect water from a nearby stream, boil it and store it in his sleeping bag at night for a little extra warmth (and room-temperature drinking in the morning).

Once the fever lifted on Day 3, O’Connor was in his element. For the competition’s final four hours, he and his survivalist partner prepared their three courses for judges in a state-of-the-art outdoor kitchen, flanked by an opponent and partner doing the same.

“I never really felt like, ‘my gosh, I’m super hungry or worried about starving or anything like,’” O’Connor said. “There were some times where maybe you were a little lightheaded because you hadn’t eaten anything in a while, but you have some greens or licorice root all around you to munch on.”

O’Connor walked to Folsom Lake from his nearby house on acreage growing up, picking watercress and blackberries and shooting quail. The food industry called to him from a young age: he “opened” a fake restaurant in his bedroom around 8 years old, began working at a real bistro at 14 and got his first chef’s knife tattoo as a 17-year-old cook at high-end Masque Ristorante in El Dorado Hills.

O’Connor was the wunderkind executive chef at then-downtown hotspot Blackbird Kitchen & Bar by the time he turned 24, having already having cooked at Ella Dining Room & Bar, The Kitchen and restaurants throughout southern France.

He later retreated to a ranch in Montana to forage, hunt and fish every day while occasionally cooking for the Yellowstone Park Foundation.

O’Connor returned to high-end restaurant life at the Bay Area’s Saison (three Michelin stars at the time) and Coi (two stars) before splitting to work as Cobram Estate’s chef-at-large, traveling the world to promote the Australian olive oil brand’s products through his cooking from 2016-20.

He now lives in East Sacramento and is a pop-up and freelance chef, cooking extravagant open-fire dinners, sometimes for private parties and sometimes making tickets available for purchase at chefkevinoconnor.com. Many of the dinners are in the Napa Valley, but O’Connor’s work takes him all over the U.S., he said.

How did O’Connor fare at the end of “Chefs vs. Wild”? Fire up Hulu on Monday to find out, or head to Tiger at 722 K St. for O’Connor’s watch party, where he’ll be selling and signing copies of his memoir/cookbook “Chasing Harvest.

Doors will open at 6 p.m., the viewing will start at 7 and the after-party will keep rolling at neighboring bar Darling Aviary.

What I’m Eating

Thai Chili is one of the Sacramento region’s only restaurants to make po tak, a seafood soup with mushrooms and ginger.
Thai Chili is one of the Sacramento region’s only restaurants to make po tak, a seafood soup with mushrooms and ginger.

I love a Thai restaurant that goes outside of tried-and-true options, and Thai Chili in Elk Grove had enough of that to pique my interest (plus plenty of familiar options for those seeking comfort food).

New customers might have already eaten at owner Teerayut Phupong’s other places, Bangkok@12 Thai Restaurant in downtown Sacramento and Thai Spoon in Natomas, before getting to Thai Chili at 8696 Elk Grove Blvd., Suite 5. There’s some overlap between the different concepts, but plenty of unique dishes as well.

I’ll probably never go back to this 18-year-old Thai restaurant without ordering the lemongrass chicken and shrimp with banana ($17.50), sautéed with mixed veggies in a chili sauce. Those perfectly-ripe banana slices embedded throughout are absolute game-changers — just the corner of one spread around the other ingredients adds a surprising yet welcome burst of fruity sweetness.

Thai Chili and Phupong’s other restaurants are among the few to offer po tak ($14) in the Sacramento area. A cloudy lemongrass soup with shrimp, scallops and squid rings as well as button mushrooms and cauliflower, it’d be super-soothing for someone nursing an illness. Described as “spicy” on the menu, it’s really quite mild — more tangy than anything, thanks to the lemongrass.

Ever had your drunken noodles with crab meat ($18) mixed in? The crustacean’s sweet, rich flesh (real stuff here, no imitation crab) cut through the substantive heat and earthy flat noodles to create a bougier take on a gut-stuffing classic.

Openings & Closings

  • Willow, a Southern Italian restaurant in the new 10-story Exchange Hotel, quietly opened Sept. 13 at 1006 4th St. Chef Russell Middleton oversees a team crafting housemade focaccia and pasta, shareable secondi piatti and other dishes a stone’s throw from Downtown Commons.

  • Taqueria Garibaldi has closed one of its Arden Arcade restaurants at 3435 El Camino Ave. amid legal troubles, and its replacement is already up-and-running. Elizabeth Martinez’s new Tapaltos Auténtica Taqueria serves tacos, mariscos, Mexican breakfast dishes and more with handmade tortillas.

  • Insight Coffee has merged with Sun & Soil Juice Co., the roastery announced on social media. The midtown juice bar with açaí bowls has taken over Insight’s West Sacramento cafe at 3650 Industrial Blvd., Suite 140, which opened earlier this year.