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Shayna Raichilson - Zadok

MEET HELL'S KITCHEN CONTESTANT

Enjoy cooking demos Friday during LADIES NIGHT OUT and Saturday. Chat with Shayna after her demos and learn how hot it was in "Hell's Kitchen"

From as early as she can remember, Shayna Raichilson-Zadok loved for cooking. For her and her grandmother, the kitchen was their special place for making family dinners, baking cupcakes, and creating an unbreakable bond between them in the North Buffalo home that her grandfather built.

After actively pursuing Musical Theater for the first 18 years of her life, it came as quite a shock to her family when Shayna declared that she wanted to go to the Culinary Institute of America after her senior year of high school. Instead, as she was told by her mother, she would go to college in New York, major in theater and minor in something more useful. (Becoming a chef was out of the question.) Following one year of college, Shayna quit school and began working in various restaurants in New York City.

What began as a passionate hobby quickly turned into a career as Raichilson-Zadok became familiar with all of the facets of restaurant life. In 2003, she started her consultation-style catering company, Bohemian Hostess, as a way to help her through her second attempt at college. In 2005, after graduating Summa Cum Laude from Buffalo State College with a B.S. in Hospitality Administration, Shayna continued her entrepreneurial while employed as a manager for a local Buffalo restaurant and working on various business plans for other projects.

Very involved in an effort to be cast for the third season of Hell’s Kitchen (FOX), Raichilson-Zadok and her husband discovered that they were expecting their first child. She placed the dream of learning from Chef Ramsay on hold and, after the birth of her daughter, began pursuing casting for the fourth season. Perseverance paid off; the show cast Shayna as one of fifteen contestants out of over 23,000 applicants. Although she was the sixth chef eliminated from the show, she was only chef that Gordon Ramsay mentioned in a Star magazine article, saying “A natural cook, she connected naturally with food, and more important some real determination, a real fire in her belly,” very high praise for the last remaining chef-contestant without a formal culinary education.

Raichilson-Zadok’s appearance on Hell’s Kitchen and the resulting positive press created the boost that she needed to open her first restaurant. On May 20, 2008, just two weeks after her elimination, Shayna opened the doors to Steel Crazy Café. Featuring an eclectic menu of crêpes, paninis, Mediterranean cuisine and beautifully composed salads, her restaurant has quickly become a trendy meeting place for brunch, lunch or dinner in the vibrant, historic Allentown neighborhood of Buffalo.

Now pregnant with her second child, Shayna is focused on making the restaurant a success, expanding her achievements with Bohemian Hostess catering, and forming a legacy for her ever-growing family.