American celebrity chef Kelvin Fernandez is best known, first and foremost, for his amazing food. Television audiences, however, will know him as the first Latino chef to better fellow chef Bobby Flay in the Food Network’s Beat Bobby Flay, a reality cooking show in which contestants have to make a tastier dish than multi-award-winning celebrity chef Bobby Flay. Fernandez beat him in 2015 with his signature arepa dish (a traditional South American dish made from maize dough).

Fernandez is not without his own significant trophy cabinet. He was the runner-up on another Food Network show, Chopped, was once cited in Forbes magazine’s 30 Chefs Under 30, and in his early 20s, became the youngest ever executive chef on New York’s notoriously unforgiving fine dining scene. He was also a two-time winner of Forbes’ Best Chef in America prize (in 2016 and 2017). He also spent time working as a personal chef to some of the biggest names in Major League Baseball.

Despite all this success, Fernandez initially showed no interest in becoming a chef, even though that’s what his dad did for a living. But during high school, he enrolled in a cooking class to impress a girl he had a crush on, and so the flame of passion was lit – for cooking, that is. Within a few years, he was working in high-ranking positions at some of the biggest restaurants in New York and building his celebrity status. Despite such high-flying success, however, he has always found time to give back, and he works as a teacher at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York.