Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City Jail propels former inmate to 'Chopped' cooking fame

How many inmates can say they found their passion for cooking in Maricopa County's Tent City Jail?

Mesa native Fernando Ruiz can.

As rough as it was making breakfast, lunch and dinner for hundreds of fellow inmates housed in military-style tents (and with allegedly low-quality ingredients), the conditions gave Ruiz an edge in Food Network's popular "Chopped" competition.

The bald-headed, goateed, green-eyed, neck-tattooed father of six beat three other chefs to win Episode 8 of Season 31 of "Chopped," which aired Tuesday. he planned to use his $10,000 prize toward a house payment in the Santa Fe, N.M., area, where he is executive chef at Santacafe. The restaurant's website describes it as a "fine-dining icon in Santa Fe since 1983" that specializes in "unique American cuisine with a Southwestern flair."

"It couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy," restaurant manager Lainey Dancer told azcentral.com.

We caught up with Ruiz on Thursday. He actually taped the show in June — it took 12 hours to shoot the whole thing, but the episode is only an hour long. He had to keep his win a secret — "technically" — until now.

This was his second Food Network competition. Last year, Ruiz won "Guy's Grocery Games," and after the show, host Guy Fieri urged him to join Facebook to promote his work. "He told me, 'you're actually better than you think you are,' " Ruiz recalled.

"I didn't start telling my story until I got picked up to do Guy's Grocery Games," Ruiz said. "Maybe it will help someone."

This is his story.

Serving time, serving food 

"I went to jail, almost two years. That's a different style of cooking, you could say," the 39-year-old Ruiz told "Chopped" judges when asked where he learned to cook.

"I did my jail time in Arizona, at the infamous Joe Arpaio at the Tents, wearing stripes and pink underwear," Ruiz said during the show's episode. Maricopa County's Tent City Jail is a nearly 7-acre outdoor compound at 2939 W. Durango St., Phoenix. The complex, which has more than 2,100 beds, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office website, opened in 1993 and houses inmates who have been sentenced to lower-level crimes, including drug possession and driving under the influence.

The show's always-proper host, Ted Allen, responded to that revelation with probably the world's most obvious statement: "In an institution like that, obviously you don't have any control over the ingredients."

Allen is right.

"We had 90 percent of it donated, expired food," Ruiz said.

"So it was like a big "Chopped' basket," judge Mark Murphy quipped.

Think "a lot of bologna, a lot of liver, a lot of potatoes," Ruiz told azcentral.com. "That's why I don't eat liver anymore."

During the competition, Ruiz shared that he used to be in a gang, "selling drugs, toting guns." But in jail, "that's where I learned how to cook. The experience I had made me realize that's something I'm really good at. And something that I can make a career out of."

Tent City inmates are required to work in jail and do county job assignments, such as food factory, housecleaning and equipment services, according to the MCSO website.

Detective Doug Matteson, spokesman for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, confirmed that Ruiz served time in Tent City, in 1996, 1999 and 2001. His last stint in jail, from March 31 to June 7, 2001, was for failure to appear on a probation violation warrant and driving with a suspended license. At the time, he lived in Tempe and was arrested by the Tempe Police Department, Matteson said.

"He's been in our system a few times," he said.

After Ruiz left Tent City, he got a student loan to attend what was then Scottsdale Culinary Institute. He later moved to New Mexico to start a new life. He and his wife, Michelle Romero, have three children, a nearly 2-year-old, a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old. He also has three grown kids, ages 19, 22 and 23. His parents still live in the Valley.

Of life in Tent City, he told azcentral.com, "I don't want to say I was rehabilitated there... I wasn't there to think I was getting help... I was basically trying to survive in a cage full of dogs."

RUIZ'S 'CHOPPED' COURSES

First round:

Chefs had to 20 minutes to make an appetizer with:

• Chaudin, a Cajun dish of ground pork combined with vegetables and rice and packaged into a pig's stomach. It's baked, then sliced.
• Fresh green peas.
• Sorghum, a grass cultivated as a grain and forage; a relative of millet (this ingredient threw off all contestants). 
• Vodka sauce.

Ruiz said he had never seen sorghum, and decided to boil it like rice (big mistake). But the unfamiliar ingredient did not shake his confidence.

"Cooking in jail, getting the food that we got in there, we would make something good out of something bad, and we cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for 700 people," he said on the show. "I'm kind of hoping that it might give me an advantage."

Ruiz's pan-seared chaudin with guajillo vodka sauce was good enough to save him from elimination.

Second round: 

Chefs had 30 minutes to make an entree with:

• Cobia, also known as black kingfish.
• Crenshaw melon.
• Mezcal.
• Tasso ham.  

Ruiz was happy to work with cobia, and it showed. "Growing up in Mexico, we did a lot of fishing in the ocean," he said during the show.

Judges loved his pan-seared cobia with smashed red potatoes with ancho chile, cotija cheese and Mexican crema; a melon sauce reduced with mezcal; and tasso ham chicarrónes (fried pork rinds).

"Clearly, you're more yourself in this round, which is nice to see," judge Amanda Freitag told him.

"Yeah, man, light years ahead of your first course," judge Chris Santos added. "The fish is perfect... solid dish."

(Santos was Ruiz's favorite judge — "We could related to each other," Ruiz told azcentral.com.

Third round:

By the dessert round, Ruiz had befriended his opponent, Renee Blackman, a self-taught, private chef from Barbados who lives in New York. But they still had to compete for $10,000. The basket ingredients:

• Thai rolled ice cream.
• Strawberry papaya.
• Croutons.
• Honey and basil-seed drink.

The 31-year-old Blackman served the judges a papaya honey basil-seed gelato with cinnamon peppercorn crumble.

Meanwhile, Ruiz made berry puff pastry and crouton ice cream with strawberry papaya basil creme anglaise.

"I have to give you huge props for fully cooking puff pastry," Freitag told him.

Decision time

As it's often the case in "Chopped," there wasn't an obvious winner.

But when Allen lifted the metal cloche to reveal that Blackman had been chopped, Ruiz showed how much he had grown to respect his opponent with a big, heartfelt embrace.

He had her arms around her shoulders as judges explained why they had to chop her.

Ruiz was in shock.

"I cannot believe I won 'Chopped,' " he said as the show ended. "Seventeen years ago I would have probably ended up in prison or dead. Now it's a totally different story."

Arpaio, too, said he was elated to hear that Ruiz's life had taken a different course.

"I feel honored that one of the inmates made good. It's music to my ears," he said. "I know I had a lot of criticism running that operation."

MORE AZCENTRAL ON SOCIAL: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

Things To Do app: Get the best in events, dining and travel right on your device

(Editor's note: Arpaio, the longtime Republican incumbent, is running for re-election on Nov. 8 against Democrat Paul Penzone. Ironically, an anti-Arpaio political ad aired during the commercial break right after Ruiz made the reference to "infamous Joe Arpaio." There's no escaping political ads these days, even on Food Network).