Confetti fell and tears flowed as host Alejandra Ramos revealed Coby Bailey was The Great American Recipe Season 4 winner. The Louisiana fire captain’s Cajun-infused one-two punch of flavor during the last rounds of competition won over judges Tiffany Derry, Timothy Hollingsworth, and Francis Lam. 

Others making the Top 3 were physical therapist and American Ninja Warrior alum Rex Alba and foster care coordinator Waigal Safi, who leaned on their respective Filipino and Afghan culinary family roots. During the first challenge of the August 16 finale on PBS, the home chefs were tasked with creating a hometown recipe sent in by their relatives. Bailey not only impressed the regular panel but guest judge Jake Cohen with his cypress knee po’ boy and homemade French fries. 

The second and deciding final cook saw the finalists serve up their great American recipe complete with entrée, side dish and dessert. Bailey had his wife Toni as sous-chef while prepping his cornbread stuffed chicken over grits with andouille cream sauce, homemade coleslaw and grandma Millie’s potatoes. He finished his self-described “Coby on a plate” presentation with a firehouse cobbler. His love of making food could be traced back to cooking for mess duty in the United States Navy. He has taken that passion into making meals for his fellow Lafayette firefighters for more than 27 years. 

Here Bailey opens up about taking home the show title means to him and what’s next. 

How does it feel to win this competition?

I’ll be honest with you. Personally, I think Cajun food is the best food on the planet. I watch a lot of TV cooking shows, and for some reason the Cajuns or people from Louisiana never win. So for me to go in there and win meant the world to me. I represented my culture. I represented where I come from. I represented the fire department, the military. I tried to represent as many people as I could in as many things as I could, and I hope I did. I think I did. I’m proud. 

You stayed true to yourself and you played to your strengths. A lot of people may have tried to make things fancy or go in a different direction, but you kept it simple. 

I kind of stepped the game up a little bit for the finale. I did keep it pretty simple. Cajun food isn’t that hard. I’m not really big on using a  bunch of different herbs together, but I am big on the Cajun seasoning. It just brings so much depth of flavor to whatever you cook with. So whereas most contestants had so many different herbs and spices, I just had my spices that we put in there, and it kind of brings all those flavors together. The way we cook Cajun food and the way we prepare it is fairly simple. But for the last episode, for the finale itself, when I saw the po’boy recipe, I was like, “Man, I feel like it’s simple. I feel like it’s too simple.” I needed to step the game up because I honestly felt like I was kind of behind the eight ball since Waigal had quite a few more wins than I did going into the finale.

I know he was strong, and I just couldn’t come with some shrimp on bread and a little bit of lettuce and tomato, you know what I mean? So I incorporated a recipe that I eat quite a bit at one of my favorite restaurants. I never made that before, so I’m like, “I think I could do that.” I said, “We’re going to go big or we’re going to go home.” So we kind of left it all out right there with the po’boy, and it was really good.  I knew if I came close to making it like the restaurant made it that I would do very well, and I think I nailed it actually and brought that home.

PBS

There was a lot of suspense, whether the po’boy was going to stay standing up or not. That was the big question. 

I was the same way. I was hoping that it wouldn’t fall out. So I browned some butter, and I put the butter in the oven inside there to kind of give it a crust where it would kind of help hold that stuff in there. But there is a little bit of time in between where you make the po’boy and when they eat and I’m like, “Please do not soak through this bread and go through there. It worked out perfectly actually.”

How was it having your wife there? I mean, that’s a lot of pressure in itself. 

We are not the most compatible in the kitchen together. When Toni cooks, she’s in the kitchen and when I’m cooking, I’m in the kitchen. We do things differently, but she’s a great cook, and by her doing most of the potatoes took so much more pressure off of me that I could concentrate a little bit more on the sauce so I could get that just right. I could make sure that the grits were just right. The chicken itself is fairly simple, but just by having that one less thing to do or those three less things to do, I just felt very confident when she got there. I was super confident that things were going to go our way.

And that was your grandmother’s recipe, the potatoes.

That was my grandmother’s recipe.

So it was important she helped get that right. 

There is a story behind that recipe. My grandmother called everybody at one time. She was losing her eyesight, and she called everyone in to teach them the recipes, and nobody showed up but my wife. So she was a little heartbroken about that. So she says, “I’m going to give you this recipe, but you cannot give it to nobody else. You keep it for yourself.” So, my wife has been holding on to that recipe for quite some time. I have a YouTube channel, and I told my wife, “We need to put that video [of her] on YouTube. If she was alive, she would’ve put that video on YouTube.” She would love to have her potatoes kind of be famous a little bit. Now that they are from this show, we definitely got to put it on there for everybody to have so the family will get their recipe finally. 

What did it mean to compete against Rex and Waigal there? 

Listen, I don’t know who cast us, but they did a fantastic job. We became very good friends fast the very first day. There was never ill will between any of the contestants. Again, I feel Cajun food is kind of simple to do what we do, and we don’t use a lot of ingredients. Waigal’s dishes were just so gorgeous every single time. The judges loved him. I knew he was strong. He was a strong cook. Same thing with Rex. Rex was cooking 12 different things at one time. I’m like, “How is this dude doing that?” So, I knew that I really kind of had to bring my “A” game. I really did leave my best recipe for last. When it went down to the finale, I was going to give you my best recipe for the finale. And I did. And I think that’s kind of what pulled me through.

It looks like you had a lot of support from the community. 

So we got a place called the Yard Goat. I would love to give them some props. They did a fantastic job, Ms. Sarah. We tried to rent it for the opening show just to get people interested in the show. And then when she found out that it was a season where you had more than one episode, she goes, “Oh no, we’re doing this. We do this for The Bachelorette, and we are going to do that for you, a local boy.” She was even excited. So at first I was like, “How much is this going to cost me?” I dunno if I can afford it every Friday. And she said, “We got it. We are going to take care of it.” And they did a fantastic job. We’ve been having about a hundred, 120 people every Friday, and we were expecting about 250, maybe somewhere close to 300 [for the finale]. We don’t have the final numbers yet, but we think we blew that out of the water, honestly.

Coby Bailey and Fran Westcott (PBS)

That’s amazing. That’s a testament to you. 

Well, I cooked for my own party and I think everybody was kind of not expecting that, but Fran [Westcott] came down and actually helped me cook. She wanted to be part of that. And while I was cooking, all my Navy buddies showed up, and man, that was awesome. It was somewhat emotional for me again, for them guys to show up. I mean, they drove down from Michigan, West Virginia, Tennessee, took their time out to come spend it with me just for that one night. I was absolutely amazed. So just from the very beginning of it, I was touched by it.

A ton of firefighters came. We are a big family with that. And in high school I was very fortunate to have just a great group of friends and classes even three years above us. When I was a freshman in high school, the seniors kind of hung out with us too, and all those people showed up. I mean, we had people from four years behind us and four years ahead of us out there having a good time. Everybody just had a blast. I got so many calls and texts saying, “We don’t know what we’re going to do on Friday night. We had so much fun watching you cook on TV every Friday night.” The finale was a blast and we loved it, but they were disappointed that it was over.

What are you going to take with this platform that you now have?

It is been crazy. Since Saturday. I probably had 27 orders [on my website]. I mean, I was getting about, I don’t know, four or five orders of seasoning through the website a week, and it just exploded. I had 27 orders. I think I have five more left in the thing today to kind of fulfill. I’ve been in touch with the local PBS station here. They’re interested in doing some things, and I cook for the fallen firefighters memorial that comes up next month. I have so many people contacting me to judge cook-offs, and I feel like I’m a celebrity even though I’m just a dude. You know what I mean? I tell everybody, I’m just a guy. I’m really not the celebrity that people think that I am, but I see what they’re talking about. But in my mind, I’m really just a guy.

What’s the website where people can find your spices? 

Coby: It’s https://captaincobys.com/  And I find that my website’s a little unique. You can buy your seasoning and some merchandise from there, but you can also click on my videos that I put out. So kind of a one-stop shop. If you want to catch a couple recipes, you can get it off there. Or if you want a t-shirt or some seasoning, you can get all right there too.

What have you taken from this experience? 

Coby: It was an awesome experience. While you’re there cooking, you want to win over the judges, but in the back of my mind, that whole time is I want to make sure I represented Louisiana. I wanted to make sure I represented the Cajuns…I would love to do more cooking shows. I had a blast. I had a great time with that. Even though sometimes the hours are a little long. I had a fun time doing that. And we’ll see. I have a few ideas. I would like to start another TikTok channel. I have one, but I’m not really into it that much. I’m going to just try to go the fireman route with that. So I have that on my plate. I’m ready to launch that, and then we’ll see what Captain Coby brings just through the seasoning and the videos. I got a few more videos about to come out, so I’m hoping that takes off too.