“Bobby&x27;s Triple Threat” Titan Ayesha Nurdjaja Recalls How Bobby Flay Recruited Her After She &x27;Swore Off&x27; Cooking Competitions (Exclusive) Chiara Kim, Emily RellaFri, June 19, 2026 at 9:35 PM UTC 0 Claudette Zepeda (left) and Ayesha Nurdjaja at the 2026 'Food & Wine' Classic in AspenCredit: @galdophoto Ayesha Nurdjaja initially swore off cooking competitions after appearing on Chopped in 2009 Bobby Flay convinced her to join Bobby&x27;s Triple Threat after training her to prepare for the challenges The chef shares what she has learned from Flay and what it&x27;s like filming a Food ...
“Bobby's Triple Threat” Titan Ayesha Nurdjaja Recalls How Bobby Flay Recruited Her After She 'Swore Off' Cooking Competitions (Exclusive)
Chiara Kim, Emily RellaFri, June 19, 2026 at 9:35 PM UTC
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Claudette Zepeda (left) and Ayesha Nurdjaja at the 2026 'Food & Wine' Classic in AspenCredit: @galdophoto -
Ayesha Nurdjaja initially swore off cooking competitions after appearing on Chopped in 2009
Bobby Flay convinced her to join Bobby's Triple Threat after training her to prepare for the challenges
The chef shares what she has learned from Flay and what it's like filming a Food Network show while speaking with PEOPLE at the 2026 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen
Ayesha Nurdjaja once "swore off" cooking competitions.
The executive chef and partner of popular New York City restaurants Shuka and Shukette was eliminated on Food Network's Chopped in its second season in 2009. She tells PEOPLE at the 2026 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen how Food Network chef Bobby Flay was able to recruit her to be a titan on his show Bobby's Triple Threat, even after she swore off competitive cooking.
"I was chopped, and I could not believe it," she recalls of her first foray into competition cooking. "I literally cried my heart out, and I had spent the $10,000 that I thought I was going to win already, and now I was in the hole."
"I swore off all competition cooking," she adds.
Around 15 years later, Flay came to Nurdjaja and asked her to join Bobby's Triple Threat, in which a competitor battles three titans, including Flay's girlfriend Brooke Williamson and Michael Voltaggio, for a $25,000 prize.
"I was like, 'Hell no,'" she says of her initial reaction to his proposal. "'There's a million people that would be better suited for this. There are so many amazing competitive cooking chefs out there.'"
Nurdjaja clarifies that "cooking competitively is much different than cooking in the kitchen," requiring a "completely different skill set." She said that thinking on the fly and cooking at restaurant caliber under a 45-minute time crunch is "really difficult."
Nurdjaja says she made Bobby Flay train her before joining on 'Bobby's Triple Threat'Credit: Jeff Schear/Getty
However, Nurdjaja eventually accepted, replacing Tiffany Derry as the show's third titan in 2025.
"I convinced her over a cup of coffee finally at a restaurant one morning," Flay told PEOPLE in February 2025. "I was just like, 'I got you, you're going to get there. You're 90% of it. I'm going to help you with the other 10%. I'm going to get you comfortable, and then you're going to fly.'"
Nurdjaja says that she trained with Flay to prepare to re-enter the world of competition cooking.
"That was kind of the deal that I made," she says. "I said, 'listen, I'll do the show if you train me,' and he was very gracious and gave me a few hours, or days, in the kitchen and showed me the ropes a little bit."
"He kept saying, 'just cook your food, just cook your food,' and to be honest with you, that's exactly what happened," she says. "Sometimes I see the two ingredients, and I'm like, 'I know exactly what I'm making,' and the other time, I look at these two ingredients, and I black out. I'm like, 'I never saw kale and mushrooms before.'"
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"Her food is dynamite," Flay told PEOPLE in February 2025 after shooting the show with Nurdjaja. "The competing chefs underestimated who she was, which was the greatest thing to watch, because she just brought it. It was so great."
Nurdjaja shares what it has been like to be under the mentorship of Flay.
"Bobby Flay is a cook, and I know that sounds like kind of a downgrade from a chef, but at the end of the day, I always want to surround myself with cooks," she says. "People that truly love food, that push themselves."
"Bobby loves food. He goes to bed thinking about food, wakes up thinking about food, and in his many decades of cooking, he is consistently evolving and using food as kind of the conduit to push himself," she adds.
"His work ethic is unparalleled, and he is tough, for sure, but he's also understanding," she says, adding that surrounding yourself with people with the same goals and energy as you is a pathway toward progress.
The chef also opened up about the work schedule of filming a Food Network show, saying that it's "a whole different ball game."
"You're nervous all day," she says. "I'm not an anxious person, but until I went on Triple Threat. Now I'm an anxious person."
She said that the uncertainty of what and when you're cooking makes the experience a "whirlwind" until you actually get into the kitchen.
Looking forward, the chef says she is "very excited" about the upcoming season of Triple Threat, also teasing a holiday show and saying that she hopes to be featured more on the Food Network.
She also shares her excitement for her upcoming cookbook, Mediterranean All The Way (out Oct. 20, 2026), which features inspiration for combining flavors from the Mediterranean diet.
Events at the 2026 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen run through June 21.
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: June 20, 2026 at 01:00AM on Source: MANUEL MAG
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