Alexandra (‘Next Level Chef’) exit interview: It was ‘one hundred percent’ more stressful than being a detective [WATCH]

Alexandra Donnadio, the 29-year-old home cook from Hillsborough, New Jersey was eliminated in 12th place on Thursday’s episode of “Next Level Chef.” Despite Team Nyesha Arrington cooking in the top kitchen and earning positive scores for her Asian-inspired New York strip steak tacos, Alexandra found herself up for elimination against Team Gordon Ramsay‘s Jordan Torrey. Watch her exclusive video interview with Gold Derby above. 

“I was just looking for that validation from the judges,” says Alexandra. “I finally got it and it wasn’t like I went out on a bad dish. It wasn’t like I screwed something up. I never went to culinary school, so to me it seemed like I was the weakest one there and they just had to put someone into elimination.” Still, she wasn’t quite expecting to go in so quickly. “It was the one dish that all of the judges complimented. None of the judges had anything bad to say. So, to be sent into elimination was definitely emotional.”

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The final elimination challenge had Alexandra cooking chicken wings, something right in the home cook’s wheelhouse. She even stated she’d be “disowned by everyone” if she lost. She tells Gold Derby that thankfully, “I do still have a family. They do make fun of me but I am not disowned.” In the end, Alexandra says she just played it too safe by making traditional buffalo wings.

For her day job, Alexandra is no stranger to stressful situations working as a police detective. But what’s more stressful? The police force or the “Next Level Chef” kitchen? “One hundred percent, cooking in the ‘Next Level Chef’ kitchen,” she responds. “It’s funny because production kept asking me, ‘Is this what it was like to be in the police academy? Did this prepare you for it?’ And I’m like, ‘No!’ It was not in the handbook of the police academy to have Gordon Ramsay judge your food.”

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