For 26-year-old Trinidadian chef Sergio Steele being on Next Level Chef was a “wild experience.”

He never wanted to go on a chef show because he found them to be generic and not very challenging. But he was intrigued by the concept of having to choose random ingredients in a limited time and thought that challenge was right for him.

“I’m from the islands, I got thick skin. So getting shouted at by chef Gordon Ramsey never bothered me. I wasn’t nervous at all. I was going in there with everything I have. I was going for the kill. I love the thrill of adrenaline so I was happy to be there.”

In the first episode, which premièred on Fox on January 2, Steele was the penultimate person to be chosen for a team. (He was one of two Trinis on the show; the other was chef Reuel Vincent.)

One of the mentors and his team leader, chef Nyesha Arrington, called him arrogant but Steele rejected that descriptor.

He said he went on to the show being himself, but the way it was edited presented him in a certain light, as the egotistical guy with the tattoos. But he was not disappointed either by the producers’ choice or being one of the last to be chosen.

He said there was a fine line between confidence and arrogance which can become ignorance. He is confident and can back up that confidence with actions and “facts” while he tries to avoid that line.

Steele is originally from Arima but he and his parents moved to Florida when he was two.

[caption id="attachment_934774" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A 16-year-old Sergio Steele working at the saute station of a restaurant. -[/caption]

“My family is Trini so growing up all I ever ate was Trini food, like curry and stewed chicken, but from around six years old my mom had me in the kitchen with her, so I understood flavours at a very young age.”

He wanted to be a chef so, at age 14, he dropped out of school to pursue that dream. He moved out of his home, found an apartment, bought a car and started working as a dishwasher at a Jamaican restaurant. Three months later he was cooking on the entire line.

Since he did not want to go to culinary school, over the next four years he hid his age and experience to get internships at 20 restaurants which prepared different types of food, and kept a second job to pay the bills.

“I did this for a reason. To learn. At every restaurant I went to the chef and said, ‘I want to learn everything you know. Please teach me.’ I would be the first person to work every day and the one to clock out and continue to work until I was the last to leave.”

By the time he was 18 he got his first paid sou chef position at a healthy, vegan fine-dining establishment.

“This was eight years ago, back then the whole healthy eating was now becoming a thing. It wasn’t really that big as yet so I got to see that establishment get built out and be a part of that.”

Looking back, he realises it was a crazy and bold move but he believed in himself so there was no plan B.

However, he said that kind of attitude was in his blood. His mother was succes