Localis chef/owner wins Season 1 of Food Network cooking competition show ‘The Globe’
Chris Barnum-Dann reopened Localis, his high-end New American restaurant at 2031 S St., with another feather in his cap last Wednesday.
Barnum-Dann won the five-episode first season of “The Globe,” a new Food Network show released through Discovery Plus and hosted by celebrity chef Robert Irvine.
“The Globe” tasked competitors with cooking three different meals from select cities around the world, eliminating one contestant each round, with the winners of each episode competing for $25,000 in the finale. They were nudged toward an ingredient or two per round, but were otherwise free to make use of an extensive pantry.
Barnum-Dann was nearly bounced in the second episode of “The Globe,” when the Localis chef and co-owner’s Oaxaca-inspired rack of goat came out undercooked. But the creativity of his crushed grasshopper rub impressed the judges, and he cruised through southern Thailand city Nakhon Si Thammarat (fried snapper with coconut rice) and New Orleans (Creole hash with blackened prawns).
In winning that episode, Barnum-Dann earned a trip for two to any of those three destinations. He’ll take his wife and Localis manager of operations Jessica Shelton-Dann to Oaxaca, figuring they had the most to learn about that cuisine.
The Episode 2 win led to an appearance in the season finale. There, Barnum-Dann cooked dishes rooted in Mumbai (lamb patties with yogurt sauce), Lima (scallop-seabass ceviche) and Paris (roast duck breast over turnip-chevre purée and blue cheese ice cream with hazelnut crumb).
Each round was judged by Irvine and Daniela Soto-Innes, a Mexican native who was named the World’s Best Female Chef at the 2019 World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards, as well as a celebrity chef from the city in question. In the Paris round, that meant Dominique Crenn, the force behind three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn in San Francisco and 2018 James Beard Award — Best Chef in the West winner.
“I think the duck is cooked perfectly,” Crenn told Barnum-Dann, to which he responded “can I die right now?”
The $25,000 will go toward fixing up Barnum-Dann’s house in Auburn, he said. He’ll also put it towards a month’s paid vacation for each of his Localis staff, an almost unheard of perk in the restaurant industry.
That’s one of many changes to post-COVID Localis. Seven- and 12-course tasting menus have replaced a la carte orders, and the restaurant is only open Wednesday through Saturday for staggered seatings between 5 and 8:30 p.m., with reservations recommended.
Barnum-Dann had originally planned to fly down to southern California to compete on the Food Network show “Chopped” — on March 18, 2020. The pandemic scrapped that appearance, but Food Network reached out again and placed Barnum-Dann on a show more to his liking.
“It was a very serious cooking competition. There’s no cheeky stuff, there’s no throwing a curveball at you. It’s just straightforward,” he said. “It’s nice to be on a show, but it’s really nice to be on a show that you would watch yourself.”
Localis received a Michelin plate in the 2019 California guide, reserved for good eateries that don’t quite reach the threshold for a Michelin star, and was named one of the region’s 50 Best Restaurants by The Sacramento Bee’s food writers earlier this year.
Barnum-Dann bought Localis from founder Chris Jarosz in 2016 and had planned to move it to east Sacramento in 2020, filling the S Street location with a pinxtos bar called Sacasta. Economic fallout from the pandemic forced him to instead keep Localis put and start working on The Lincoln Bistro & Bar, a more affordable, yet-to-open restaurant in downtown Auburn.
“The Globe” is streaming now on Discovery Plus and will air on the Food Network over the next month, with the finale coming up next at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 2. In October, Barnum-Dann plans to serve Localis tasting menus inspired by dishes cooked on the show.
This story was originally published August 14, 2021 at 7:58 AM.