Celebrity chef Jet Tila shares flavor, wisdom, and inspiration with Burke students

It’s typically difficult to hold the attention of a large group of teenagers for more than a couple of minutes. But the speaker standing at the front of a room at East Burke High School on March 6 had about 30 students wrapped around his finger. Or maybe his chopsticks.

Chef Jet Tilakamonkul (professionally known as Jet Tila) has competed and served as a judge on some of television’s most popular cooking shows, such as “Iron Chef,” “Chopped,” “Beat Bobby Flay,” and “Guy’s Grocery Games.”

But on this Thursday morning, Tila used his star power to entertain, instruct, and advise culinary students from Burke County’s five high schools, who gathered at East Burke High to meet the celebrity chef and watch him work.

Tila is currently collaborating with and designing recipes for Chartwells, the food service company contracted to Burke County Schools. His visit, part of Chartwells’ new culinary concept Global Eats, focused on Asian cuisine.

According to Bethany Duncan, marketing specialist with the school system, Global Eats turns food into a worldly adventure, with recipes that allow students to try new foods from cultures around the world while learning fun facts about the regions.

Chef Tila has created signature menu items for the China portion of Global Eats.

After Tila spent an hour enlightening (and feeding) culinary students, he moved into the East Burke cafeteria, where he spent the next couple of hours demonstrating his craft at several stations placed by Chartwells, and posing for selfies with students, staff, and faculty members.

But Tila’s initial hour on campus allowed him to share more than food with students.

The culinary class kitchen was filled with steam and the aromas of chicken, onion, and garlic. As Tila cooked and served fried rice to the assembly, he told students his life story, then encouraged those who foresee themselves cooking for a living to start on the ground floor and be prepared for long hours and hard work.

According to the chef, experience is life’s greatest teacher.

“I’m here to have a genuine conversation about what I do and maybe inspire (students), or maybe even dissuade them, to get out of this business or get into this business,” Tila said.

He told students that by the time he was their age, about 17, he had amassed more than 10,000 hours in the food service industry.

Tila’s family has deep roots in Thai cuisine in the United States. They opened the first Thai grocery store in Los Angeles in the 1970s, then launched what is believed to be the first Thai restaurant in West L.A, Royal Thai Cuisine, in the early 1980s.

Tila spent his youth working in his family’s businesses and learning the trade from the ground up. He told students there’s no substitute for hard work.

He said he was one of the rare teens just itching to go to work, so Tila enrolled in French culinary school, then Japanese culinary school. When the tech boom hit California’s Silicon Valley at the turn of the century, he saw his chance to make a big move.

The chef opened the first Asian cafe on the campus of an upstart company called Google.

“And instead of feeding 100 people a night in a restaurant, we’re feeding 10,000 people a day on campus, within three hours,” he explained. Tila then expanded his experiences by opening college and university cafes, and in 2007, he made the move to Las Vegas.

“I worked for one of the best hotels on earth in Las Vegas,” he said.

In the mid-2000s, Tila’s life changed when he was approached by the Food Network to do a show called “Iron Chef America.”

“I was in my 30s at that point, and I was like, I’ve got to do this,” he said. “The kid from L.A., who came from an immigrant family, who’s had some amazing opportunities — I knew I had to take every chance I could as the stage got bigger and bigger.”

That stage finally included stints as a competitor on television’s best-known cooking shows, including a competition against his idol, Chef Masahara Morimoto. He said the experience was overwhelming.

“I walked in, and I was like, ‘Oh, Morimoto San, you are my idol,’ Tila said. ‘I’ve been watching you for 20 years.’ And he’s like, ‘Good luck, kid.’

“So we did a one-hour battle,” he continued. “I made sushi against my sushi idol.”

Morimoto won the battle, but only by 2 points, and afterward, the legendary chef encouraged Tila to continue his path toward fame.

Tila told the aspiring chefs that cooking for a living is only one of many facets of life as a culinarian.

“I have designed and opened so many spaces,” he said. “The NBC Studios in L.A. just took us through a giant $600 million remodel. It’s a gorgeous campus, and I had a lot of hand in all those spaces.

“So, as a chef, be multifaceted, because if TV leaves me tomorrow, I have four other jobs,” Tila stated. “Working with Chartwells, which is a part of the industry, is a huge part of my career.”

He told students his initial forays into the world of celebrity were filled with self-doubt and anxiety, but he assured the teens those challenges made him a stronger man and a better chef.

“I know a lot of celebrities that fame has gotten their heads, but I measure myself more as a person,” Tila stated. “Fame is a byproduct of my job, and I love it because it affords me the life I never thought I would have, but it’s not about being famous.

“We get paid tons of money to go do fun things. I get to hang out on TV with my friends. But what it really comes down to is, what are you going to do with it?” Tila asked.

He advised the young people to always believe they can overcome any challenges before them.

“One of my toughest obstacles was my mind,” Tila stated. “Not believing I deserved success, because I had a learning disability. English wasn’t my first language. I really had to really invite myself, in every phase, to believe I’m just as good or better and I can do this.”