Success 2012: Alex Guarnaschelli, celebrity chef and executive chef at New York City's Butter restaurant and The Darby . She is also a television personality on the Food Network shows Chopped and Alex's Day Off

Alexandra "Alex" Guarnaschelli is a celebrity chef and executive chef at New York City's Butter restaurant and The Darby . She is also a television personality on the Food Network shows Chopped and Alex's Day Off.
A Manhattan native, Guarnaschelli is the daughter of cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli and John Guarnaschelli. She is a graduate of Horace Mann School and Barnard College. Her culinary experience started while watching her mother test numerous recipes at home while editing cookbooks. After becoming a chef, Guarnaschelli worked at a number of restaurants in France, New York and Los Angeles, including Larry Forgione's An American Place and Guy Savoy's La Butte Chaillot. She also worked at Daniel Boulud's eponymous restaurant and Joachim Splichal's Patina before becoming the executive chef at Butter.
She married Brandon Clark, a personal-injury lawyer, on April 29, 2007; they have a child. Guarnaschelli was a competitor on The Food Network's Iron Chef America, taking on Cat Cora in the 2007 "Farmers' Market Battle." Cora won the challenge. Guarnaschelli has since appeared as a judge on the program. In 2011, she competed in the fourth season of The Next Iron Chef, where she placed as the third runner-up. She also competed on Food Network Challenge, Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast episode and lost the competition.. After competing in the fourth season of "The Next Iron Chef", Guarnaschelli has become a sous chef to Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian.
In 2008, she became the host of The Food Network's The Cooking Loft with Alex Guarnaschelli, in which the chef teaches a small group of students how to construct new variations of classic dishes.
Guarnaschelli has been a judge on Food Network's competition show Food Network Challenge, and frequently appears as a judge on Food Network's cooking competition show Chopped and on Food Network's series The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

Chef Guarnaschelli has appeared on Food Network’s Iron Chef America as both a challenger and a judge, competed on season four of The Next Iron Chef and this fall she will join the cast of The Next Iron Chef: Redemption. She is a recurring judge on the popular prime-time series Chopped and is featured on her own shows, The Cooking Loft, as well as Alex's Day Off, which launched in October 2009.