Alex Guarnaschelli

Alexandra Maria Guarnaschelli (born June 20, 1969) is an American chef, cookbook author, and television personality. She currently serves as an executive chef at New York City's Butter restaurant and was executive chef at The Darby restaurant before its closing. Guarnaschelli studied cooking extensively in France.

She appears as a television personality on the Food Network shows The Kitchen, Chopped (as a judge), Iron Chef America, All Star Family Cook-off, Guy's Grocery Games (as both a judge and a competitor), and The Best Thing I Ever Ate. She hosts Alex's Day Off, The Cooking Loft, and Supermarket Stakeout. In 2012, she won that season of The Next Iron Chef: Redemption. In January 2022, she premiered her newest show, Alex vs. America, also on Food Network.

In 2013, Guarnaschelli's first cookbook was published. Old-School Comfort Food: The Way I Learned to Cook mixes autobiographical details with favorite recipes from her professional life that she adapted for the home.

Early life
Guarnaschelli is the only child of cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli and John Guarnaschelli. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but the family moved to New York City when she was just a few days old.

Guarnaschelli's culinary experience started while watching her mother test numerous recipes at home while editing cookbooks.

She graduated from Horace Mann School in 1987 and from Barnard College in 1991 with a degree in art history.

Career
In 1991, she worked for minimum wage in a restaurant, An American Place, for one year.

Guarnaschelli worked under Larry Forgione (whose son is Iron Chef Marc Forgione), and then at a number of restaurants in France, New York and Los Angeles, including Guy Savoy's La Butte Chaillot. She also worked at Daniel Boulud's eponymous restaurant and Joachim Splichal's Patina, before becoming the executive chef at Butter Midtown in 2003. She was executive chef at The Darby restaurant before its closing in 2013. She chairs the Museum of Food and Drink's Culinary Council.

In 2022, it was announced that Guarnaschelli became godmother of the Discovery Princess cruise ship.

Television appearances
Guarnaschelli was a competitor on The Food Network's Iron Chef America, taking on Cat Cora in the 2007 "Farmers' Market Battle." Cora won the challenge. Guarnaschelli has since appeared as a judge on the program. In 2011, she competed in the fourth season of The Next Iron Chef, where she placed as the third runner-up. She also competed on the Food Network Challenge Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast episode and lost the competition. After competing in the fourth season of The Next Iron Chef, Guarnaschelli became a sous chef to Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian.

In 2008, she became the host of The Food Network's The Cooking Loft with Alex Guarnaschelli, in which the chef teaches a small group of students how to construct new variations of classic dishes.

Guarnaschelli has been a judge on Food Network's competition show Food Network Challenge, and frequently appears as a judge on Food Network's cooking competition show Chopped, Cooks Vs. Cons, Young and Hungry, and Guy's Grocery Games, as had appeared on the Food series The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

Guarnaschelli starred in the Food Network television show Alex's Day Off, which premiered in October 2009. It ran for three seasons and 32 episodes

She competed in season 5 of The Next Iron Chef: Redemption, winning in the final Kitchen Stadium showdown against chef Amanda Freitag. Her debut challenge as an Iron Chef on Iron Chef America aired on December 30, 2012.

Guarnaschelli made guest appearances on the Nickelodeon television show Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn, on the one-hour special "Go Hollywood" on November 25, 2015 and later on the ABC television show The Real O'Neals in the episode "The Real Thanksgiving" on November 15, 2016.

She later made appearances as a judge in episode five of Iron Chef Gauntlet, where chef Gruenberg was eliminated before the final showdown in episode six "The Gauntlet", and on the Food Network's Beat Bobby Flay, in which she challenged Bobby with her signature lobster dish and also won that challenge. She made a guest appearance as herself in the season 5 finale of the ABC Family sitcom Young and Hungry, in which her job offer to Emily Osment's main protagonist Gabi serves as the crux to the episode's storyline, left unresolved due to cancellation of both the show and a planned film wrap-up. She also appeared in the Showtime series Billions and as a mentor on season 20 of Worst Cooks in America as the captain of the Blue Team, opposite Anne Burrell. Alex ultimately became the winning mentor.

In 2022, she premiered Alex vs. America, also on Food Network.

Personal life
On April 29, 2007, Guarnaschelli married Brandon Clark. The two met in 2006 at New York's Institute of Culinary Education while Alex was teaching a fish class. Their daughter, Ava, was born in July 2007.

The couple's marriage eventually ended, and in June 2020, Guarnaschelli announced her engagement to chef Michael Castellon, a Chopped winner who had proposed to her on her birthday over the weekend of June 19–20. In February 2022, it was announced that the couple ended their engagement.