A North Point High School graduate is trading the school’s kitchens for Gordon Ramsay’s, after being selected to compete on Season 25 of Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen.”
Nadia Philips, a 2020 graduate of North Point’s Culinary Arts Program, is one of 18 contestants on the show’s milestone 25th season, which marks the series’ “silver jubilee” with a new format: for only the second time in the show’s history, every competitor is under 25 years old. Contestants are split by gender into a Blue Team of men and a Red Team of women, with Philips, 24, competing on the Red Team. Season 25 premieres Thursday, Sept. 24, at 8 p.m. on Fox.
Like every Hell’s Kitchen season, the stakes are steep: the eventual winner becomes head chef at a Hell’s Kitchen restaurant and receives a $250,000 prize, all under the notoriously demanding eye of chef and host Gordon Ramsay.
Philips developed her foundation at North Point’s Culinary Arts Program, one of 16 competitive, application-based Career and Technical Education programs the Waldorf school offers to Charles County students, who apply as eighth-graders for a spot. The program is fully accredited through the American Culinary Federation Education Foundation Accrediting Commission and is led by instructor Chris Willis. Students in the program train in commercial kitchen management, food safety, and menu development, culminating in a capstone Iron Chef-style Mystery Basket competition, with additional opportunities to compete in SkillsUSA regional, state, and national culinary contests.
Philips joins a modest but real line of Maryland chefs who’ve appeared on the show over the years, including past contestants from Bowie, Baltimore, and Barrelville in earlier seasons.
North Point High School is encouraging Charles County residents to tune in and root for Philips when Season 25 premieres this month.
