Exclusive interview with Fire Masters Judge and former Hell’s Kitchen Chef, Andy Husbands

I got to sit down and have a chat with Chef Andy Husbands — was honored to, in fact — and he filled me in on his many impressive endeavors in the professional cooking industry.

In this piece, we’ll go into his many restaurants, his many books, TV appearances, and yes, we even went through a few of his thoughts on Hell’s Kitchen and his experience on that show and what he thought of that point in his life. All this in the interview he graciously granted me.

Andy Husbands caught my eye and piqued my interest when I first watched him compete in Season 6 of Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay on Fox. Back then I was a struggling writer trying to get articles and stories published and of all the possible places, I worked on the line in many kitchens in and around Montréal.

And where did I get my inspiration to get up in the morning after a mere few hours of sleep and start all over again? By watching a heck of a lot of Food TV, and Hell’s Kitchen was certainly a go-to for me back then and honestly, it had nothing to do with Chef Ramsay.

A look at Chef Andy Husbands and what he is doing today

Instead, I drew my inspiration from the chefs that I saw competing; doing their best to deal with the calamity that unfolded on the screen with every episode, and Chef Andy Husbands definitely did that—inspire.

In this interview, Chef Husbands goes into the ins and outs of what went down during filming, but he also takes us on a journey through his career, one that was already promising before he ever went on that show, and further, did nothing but flourish even more so after he was off the show.

Like I said in the lead in this piece, Andy Husbands is chef/owner of multiple restaurant locations, has co-won BBQ Competitions with a team he’s so proud to be a part of: IQUE—specifically they were first out of 510 teams at the Kansas City Royal in 2007 and in 2010, they became the first-ever non-Southerners to become champions at the Jack Daniels World Championships in Lynchburg, Tennessee…this according to his Wikipedia page.

But beyond the research I did for this piece, I got to sit down with the man himself and hear all about his amazing career thus far.

The Smoke Shop by Andy Husbands is his baby, and he has multiple locations—award winning locations—specifically named “Best Barbecue” in 2017 and 2018 by The Improper Bostonian, and a plethora of other accomplishment we got into as we spoke. Locations include: Assembly Row in SOMERVILLE, MA, Harvard Sq. and Kendall Sq. in CAMBRIDGE, MA, Seaport in Boston, MA, Hub Hall at TD Garden…and there are more coming, he lets us know in the interview.

He is passionate about charity and giving back to his community, and what I saw seep through the screen as I spoke to him, was a passion for cooking and a passion for those in the industry, which cemented that I had been right about him long before I ever got the chance to speak to him. He would have been a chef I would have loved to work under. He knows how to motivate and he knows how to succeed.

You could say he rose from the ashes of Hell’s Kitchen, to become the Pitmaster in the end, controlling the fire and the flames, like no other.

Let’s get to the interview, shall we?