And the Winner of 'Hell's Kitchen' Season 22 Is...

Gordon Ramsay, Johnathan Benvenuti, Ryan O'Sullivan

Season 22 of Hell’s Kitchen began with 18 chefs vying for the position as head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen restaurant in Las Vegas and the $250,000 prize. On finale night, the Top 3 were Ryan O'Sullivan, Sammi Tarantino, and Johnathan Benvenuti. Then Sammi was eliminated in the first hour and it was down to the two men, but it was Ryan who ended up walking through the winner’s door into a whole new life.

“Growing up, Gordon Ramsay was always a household name in Ireland and the U.K., so I was well aware of the shows,” Ryan tells Parade in this exclusive interview. “So, I always knew what Hell’s Kitchen was about and I always had an idea of what it entailed to be on the show. Finally, when I got there, I told myself, ‘Just don’t go home first. Just don’t go home first.’ That was my strategy. It was, ‘Feel it out, see what it’s like, see what the talent is like, play to your strengths, and whatever you do, do not go home first.’”

Ryan’s strategy worked and he’s happy that he’s finally able to reveal the fact that he’s the winner of season 22 of Hell’s Kitchen because it’s been almost two years since it filmed, during which he’s kept his job as head chef at The Country Club at Mirasol in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to pay the bills while he waited for his win to be revealed.

The 30-year-old chef, who hails from Cork City, Ireland, was bitten by the culinary bug at a young age as he watched his father, who is also a chef, whip up meals. It was also his father who introduced him to Gordon Ramsay via TV and cookbooks, so it’s almost as if Ryan’s getting cast on Hell’s Kitchen was predestination. So, it was particularly special for Ryan that the show flew in his dad from Ireland for the taping of the finale and his father got to eat his food, because Ryan has never cooked for his father before.

“To see him there, and to see him also live out his dream a little bit because he never before met Gordon Ramsay, so for me to be the catalyst for him to then meet Gordon Ramsay meant a lot to me.” Ryan says. “I wasn’t cooking exactly, but it was my menu, it was executed by me, but just for him to see me [in action] was phenomenal. I wish my mother could have been there as well because she’s got a bit of FOMO, but with COVID that wasn’t possible.”

Related: Here’s What’s Cooking for Hell's Kitchen Season 22, Including the Three Finalists

During our Zoom chat, Ryan talked more about winning season 22 of Hell's Kitchen, how he's planning to spend his $250,000 prize and how the friendships he made on the show are for life.

Was there a point in the competition where you said, “I can win this. I may have this?”

Honestly, there wasn’t a single point in the competition. I knew that I was going to be a frontrunner. From the first couple of dishes, the first couple of episodes, I was like, “Okay, I can get up there." I never once thought, “Okay, I can 100 percent win this. I’m definitely the best here.” I never thought that once.

I did have a set belief and told myself that, “You can do this. You can do this if you put your mind to it and if you stay away from the drama,” which is very hard to do in Hell’s Kitchen because there’s a lot of drama. And even up until the final, I don’t know what’s going on in anybody else’s kitchen, I don’t know what else is going on with other people. I would just concentrate on my own game, and if my own game was good enough then what will be will be.

MasterChef is just a cooking competition, but Hell’s Kitchen is also a job interview. What do you think that you brought to the table that Johnathan or Sammi didn’t that made you Gordon’s final choice?

Personally, I like to think that the kicker for it all was the hunger. Everybody says that they want to win and they’re the hungriest person there, no pun intended, obviously we’re all starving. But I came from Ireland five years ago to chase my dream, that’s what I came here for. Five years later this landed in my lap. This was destiny. I think Gordon knew that my entire life I’ve watched him on TV, from a toddler, all the way up, reading his books, listening to him on TV, interviews, radio shows, you name it, I’ve seen it.

And then he saw me when I was put in front of him. They say never meet your idol, for me that was a complete opposite. I knew once I met him and if I got in front of him, he’d know what I was about. I think the main thing for Gordon was the loyalty I’d have for him and for the job and for the company. I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am. Nothing ever comes cheap, and I think what made me stand out was the passion.

I felt like I had more passion, I felt like I had more drive. I can’t say I have more skill. We’re all very different, we’re all very great at what we do, we all have different skills. They’re all fantastic, fantastic, fantastic chefs. Johnny and Sammi are unbelievable and when all’s said and done you see how great they really are as chefs, but I just think I had the edge because I wanted it that little bit much more and I was willing to do anything to get it.

What made you decide to serve the dishes that you did for your final menu?

The final menu for me was an ode to my home. It was an ode to stuff that I knew growing up. It was an ode to different people in my life, and that’s what I wanted it to be. They say cook from your heart, and when I cook from my heart, I think of my individual family members like my father, my mother, my grandparents, and what they would have eaten and what was available to me as a kid. How could I make that?

I can make the dishes familiar to you in a way that I can change it, but it can still mean something to me. If I’m going to go through dish by dish, the vol-au-vent that I wanted to do, a chicken and mushroom vol-au-vent is one of the most common things you’ll find at an Irish wedding. It’s always on a starter, it’s a classic, classic dish, a vol-au-vent. I remember chef Jason said to me, he said, “Oh, you’re doing a vol-au-vent?” He was like, “Yeah, good luck winning with a vol-au-vent, what is this, the ‘70s?”

I looked at him and I said, “It’s not the vol-au-vent that’s going to win it for me, it’s the reason I want to cook the vol-au-vent, it’s how I’m going to make it my own and tell a story through the dish.” The lobster pot-au-feu, a pot-au-feu is just a French term of everything in a pot. That was from my mother, you know? She was never going to outclass my dad being a chef, but she was a very, very good home cook. When she’d come home from work or wherever she was, she would do her best to put together a good meal if my dad was at work.

She always used to love putting a roast beef in a pot or a collar of bacon with some beautiful vegetables and a nice sauce. So, the lobster pot-au-feu was an ode to my mother because my mother is one of the most glamorous women I’ve ever met in my life and the lobster is a very glamorous protein. So, I’m going to take that pot-au-feu, use the lobster, which is glamorous, and then turn it into a ravioli because that’s then my twist on it because I love making pasta.

All these dishes meant something to me in a certain way and I wanted to twist them to have them make more sense to somebody that’s eating them that wouldn’t know my story, you know?

Related: Let's Get Cooking! Where Are the Winners of Hell's Kitchen Now?

You mentioned Jason, I was really surprised when you picked him for your team, especially since you had first choice.

Well, honestly, it was actually chef Jason, the sous chef Jason, that said to me, “Good luck winning with a vol-au-vent.” And that’s when I was like, “All right, let’s see, buddy. Okay, let’s see here.”

Honestly, I picked Jason because Jason is a fantastic chef. He’s a very good chef, he’s been around the block, he knows exactly what to do when he’s given instruction. When he has to give the instruction, I feel like he found it a little bit more difficult because he found it difficult for people to communicate back with him because he had one speed, he had one voice, and that was how he knew how to speak to people.

When you’re working for your friend, there’s a lot less stress. You know that you’re just working for your buddy, you know you’re going to get it right, you’re not afraid to mess up because you know you won’t mess up. Jason and I are actually very good friends, like the rest of the cast. I picked Jason to run my meat station because I know that guy knows how to cook meat like the back of his hand. [During the show], he just put himself in situations where he wasn’t best for that situation.

Instead of me picking my friends, I picked people that I knew were great in a position. I still have to run a kitchen at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who my friends are. I still have a job to do, I still have to run a kitchen, so I’m going to pick the people that I know are great in those positions. So, throughout the competition, I kept taking note who did fantastic in what position, and when people had the opportunity, I’m like, “Well, there’s my team.” I knew exactly where I’m going to put everybody, I know their strengths. I’ve got to play to my strengths, and I feel like maybe Johnny picked his friends over what their strengths were.

You and Johnathan seemed to be very tight on the show. Have you stayed friends since then?

Me and Johnny are best friends. We talk on the phone every day. I talk to Johnny more than I talk to my wife I’d say, and he’d say the same thing. No, me and Johnny have been best friends since the second we met each other, we just clicked from the get-go because of the way we talk about food and what our goals are. We both got a five on the first day, and then we happened to be roommates, and when Tad and Mattias went home really early in the competition, it was just me and Johnny in that room.

Every night once we’d take off our mics and get into bed and the lights went off, me and Johnny could stay up for an hour or two talking about the day or what’s going to happen next. We bonded from the get-go and the bond is as strong as it’s ever been, you know? It’s very strange for me to meet somebody and within three weeks feel like I’ve known him my whole entire life. Our friendship is a very, very special friendship. And if I never met Johnny through the show and I met him on the street, regardless, I think we’d still have the exact same friendship because that’s just who we are.

What’s the long-term dream? After you do your service in Las Vegas, where do you see your career going from there?

After the term, I would love to stay in TV. I would love to have an opportunity to cook and talk. As you well know, I’m well able to talk and well able to cook, so I’d like to put the two of those together and stay on TV hopefully. I haven’t found my niche just yet; I have a lot of ideas. I’m talking to a lot of people. I think if I just get my foot in the door somewhere, somebody gives me one opportunity, I think I’ll knock it out of the park.

With the cooking world so saturated, especially with TV, you need something a little bit different. You can’t have continuous cooking competitions or somebody just cooking some stuff, there has to be a want for it, there has to be a demand for it. Without going into too much detail, TV is where I’d love to stay. And then eventually down the road, I’ll open up a couple of restaurants, but not right now, not in the climate that we’re at with the cost of everything and staff, and the world is screaming out for staff. It’s not a great time to open up a restaurant. I’m only 30 years of age, I still have a lot of time on my side, but TV is where I’d like to stay.

Related: 16 Things You Didn't Know About Hell’s Kitchen: Battle of the Ages Star Gordon Ramsay

You said on the show you had never cooked for your father before. Why is that?

Christmas dinners and occasions like that growing up, he’s the chef of the house, so he would always cook all of them. No matter what he’d done, he’d come home, he’d cook all the food. He always would. Never really had time, not time to sit down like, “Dad, I’m going to cook a meal for you today,” because we’d always end up doing it together or something. Now, I think the most he might have ever gotten off me was a bowl of cereal, but that’s about it, you know?

Down the line, I think I’ll get a lot more opportunities to cook for my mother and father. I’ve never really cooked for my mom either, she was always the feeder of the house. An Irish mammy would always feed us no matter what. There’s always something on the stove, there’s always something in the oven, she was always cooking.

Any thoughts on how you want to spend the $250,000 prize money? Is there something you want to invest in or do something special for your wife Jennifer?

The first thing I’m going to do is just look at it. I’m going to look at it for about three months and just see it. I’m not going to touch a penny of it, I’m just going to look at it and enjoy the hard work that it took to get it. A lot of people say, “Easy come, easy go,” there was nothing easy about how I obtained this, and I definitely won’t be wasting it. I’m glad that I got it at 30 years of age instead of 25, because I would have done something stupid with it.

Definitely, there’s a long vacation involved for my wife, I’ll maybe take my family on a nice cruise, all be together and celebrate. And then, hopefully, I’ll put some money towards a house and see what happens. I haven’t really thought that far yet. I’m still very busy in my day-to-day job. I think time will tell, but I think definitely a long vacation and maybe the thoughts of a house would be in the cards for.

What was the best part of the Hell’s Kitchen experience?

Hand on my heart, I mean this the most, the whole thing for me, forget about winning, forget about everything else, the most beautiful thing for me about this whole thing is that I got to watch myself become friends with these people all over again. We’ve all been friends for two years [since the series filmed] and then to watch [on TV] us all become friends again is the best thing for me.

I’m not an emotional man but watching myself with these people and the relationships we bonded brings a tear to my eye every time I see it. Because we’re all just trying to make it in this world and we’re all rooting for the same thing, we’re all on the same bus. I’d be lost without these people and I’m glad that we have these friendships that we made because it’s phenomenal.

Next up for Gordon Ramsay, Next Level Chef premieres Sunday, Jan. 28 at 10 p.m. ET on FOX.

Next, Find Out What Gordon Ramsay Is Dishing Up for Season 3 of Next Level Chef