Last updated: December 26, 2016 at 6:03 pm. Posted Monday, December 26, 2016 by Ryan Walsh in Uncategorized. No Comments on Meet The Newest Chef at Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill at Caesars Atlantic City.

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The Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill at Caesars Atlantic City received a gift of their own this December when Chef Milly Medley, one of the four finalists from Season 14 of FOX’s Hell’s Kitchen, came on board as their newest full time chef. The Philadelphia native will be joining the restaurant’s head chef, and Season 14 champion, Chef Meghan Gill, but now, they’re serving up awesome meals on the same team!

You can experience an amazing six-course meal prepared by both Milly and Meghan, as well as several other notable chefs from Hell’s Kitchen at the Hell’s Kitchen Takeover on New Years Eve. It is truly the most delicious way to end 2016. Get your tickets here!

We were able to sit down with Milly for a quick interview, and to hear just what he’ll be bringing to the table as the newest member of the Caesars family!

TAC: I want to start with the very, very beginning, so what’s the earliest memory you have in regards to cooking and wanting to be a chef, and do you remember the first meal you ever made?

Milly Medley: I was six years old, and the first memory I have cooking was getting on my knees and looking under the broiler to try to figure out why my toast would burn so fast. And my first dish was actually cold applesauce and scrambled eggs, and I could make scrambled eggs by myself in the pan at six years old.

TAC: Do you still make cold applesauce and scrambled eggs?

MM: Yes! Actually I do, I give it to the kids and they love it. Kids love the tartiness and sweetness of the applesauce and then they always mix it with the eggs, because the eggs are like cream. So it’s like cream, tart, and sweet all in one dish, and then I realized I’m a chef, because it’s actually a good dish!

TAC: So, from the cold applesauce and scrambled eggs, when did you realize that this was actually something you wanted to do professionally?

MM: I didn’t actually realize that I wanted to cook and be a chef until around the age of 16. I was a dishwasher at a place called “Kenny Rogers Rotisserie.”

TAC: There was a Seinfeld episode about that place, right?

MM: Yeah! It was a big, big deal. And we wood fire-roasted the chicken. As the dishwasher, I would have to marinate and spit chickens, and put them on the roaster, and I was 16, so I learned from a young age to use the heat from wood to cook chickens. It felt good to figure out how to get the chickens cooked without burning them, and how to get them nice and perfect, so I started cooking a lot after that. I was always cooking in the house, but I was 16 when I started doing it professionally. And my manager always said that I had the best chicken.

TAC: So even as a dishwasher, you had the best chicken?

MM: For sure. That has resonated through my career, the soft touch. When you see me, I look more steak and potatoes, but when you see me work, you’d rather have me do desserts. I have the soft touch where I can cook certain things at such a high heat, but with the attention that I’m giving to it, the high heat just helps me cook it faster, that’s all it does.

TAC: What is it, in particular, that you like most about working at the Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill?

MM: The volume. I’m an action junkie, and I’m one of those kind of chefs that likes dealing with adversity and pleasing a mass of people. So the volume, and the hospitality. I started in hotels, my first line cook position was in the Sheraton in Oxford Valley, then I went to the Marriott on 13th street, so my beginning was in a hotel, so I’m really going back to my roots.

TAC: Working here, you’ll actually be working with Chef Meghan Gill, who you were competing against in Season 14 of Hell’s Kitchen is there still any sort of competition there?

MM: Always. Always in the culinary world. But now, the competition is for me to build a dish, and for her to critique it and, and so it goes from a good dish to a great dish. Or she’ll build a dish, and I’ll have some input, and that goes from a great dish to an over-the-top great dish. It’s beautiful. We actually call it a “food fight,” and the customer is the one who reaps the benefits of the food fight. I love working with Meghan. She has been privy to a lot of things that I haven’t, and I’ve been privy to a lot of things she hasn’t, so it comes together, and it’s perfect. She is one of the hardest working people that I have ever met.

TAC: How was it actually being on the show?

MM: Amazing. It was like a chef boot camp. We had so much pressure to get fine dining done at a McDonald’s pace. Like, we had a scallop appetizer that, from call to table, was two minutes. And Ramsay makes it possible, and he explains to you how to make it possible, and after that, I believe that almost anything is possible. And that’s why Chef Ramsay is the number one chef on the planet right now.

TAC: Is Ramsay actually as intimidating as he comes across on the show?

MM: Yes and no. You have to ingest what he’s saying. You speak at a certain volume, I speak at a certain volume, Chef Ramsay speaks at a certain volume, that’s it. Once you eliminate the volume, you just have to ingest the content of what he’s saying, then you don’t have to worry about him raising it even higher because you got it wrong. He gave you the lesson, you duplicate the lesson, you get it right, you move on to the next lesson. So it’s actually gratifying that he gives it to you straightforward, nothing in the middle.

TAC: Your beard is pretty noticeable. I hate to ask, but have you ever had an issue with it around the food?

MM: No no no. If you go to my bio on FOX, I talk about that all the time. When food comes back, and they pull a hair out of it, we all look around the kitchen to see who it might be. Hands down, we’re going to know if it was me or not. It hasn’t happened in my entire career. Not one time in eight years. So the chef community and everybody knows that. If it would have happened one time, it would have been an issue, and that story would have carried through chefs. My beard is actually four or five times longer than what it appears to be, it’s very, very long. When I come in for work, I comb it out, braid it, and I tuck it up. That way, if there was a chance for a hair to fall in the food, I probably already got it, I already took care of it. It’s a very big thing to me, I probably take 15 minutes for work, just making sure I’m prepared and protected.

TAC: What has being on the show done for your culinary career?

MM: It’s my résumé. I don’t have to fill out a résumé any more, you’ve seen exactly who I am first hand. You can actually watch my hands move through technique. I don’t have a culinary degree, so it helps me that way. If you look at a piece of paper and you read “no culinary degree,” it’s like “How do I hire you to do culinary work, when you have no culinary degree?” So it has validated that I should be on the pedestal with every chef in every position across the planet. Like I said, Meghan is going to go down as one of the greatest, she’s a hard worker, so for people to even mention me in the same breath as her, I’m good. That’s all because of being on Hell’s Kitchen. I got my stamp of approval.

TAC: Last question, what is your favorite food?

MM: My actual favorite food to eat are hot dogs. Different variations of hot dogs. Hebrew National, Philly Franks, gas station hot dogs, sports hot dogs, high end hot dogs. I go to these places where they specialize in gourmet hot dogs. So for me personally, hot dogs are my favorite thing to eat, even though we’ve raised the level of food everywhere now. Actually, Sunoco has raised the level of hot dogs. When you go into Sunoco now, they have a station next to the hot dogs where they have so many different toppings, chipotle toppings, spicy mustard, super spicy mustard, spicy ketchup, ketchup, relish, so now Sunoco has raised their level on gourmet hot dogs. On the higher end, my favorite food to eat would be veal cheeks. I’m a fat lover, I love the taste of cow fat, so the fattier it is, the more I like it. That’s also what I like to cook the most, I love to braise meats.

We’re so glad to have Milly on board, and we can’t wait to see what delicious dishes he has in store for us at the Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill at Caesars! For an amazing opportunity to enjoy some spectacular samplings from him, as well as several other former Hell’s Kitchen contestants, make sure to get your tickets now for the Hell’s Kitchen Takeover this New Years Eve!