After recovering from Hodgkin’s disease more than seven years ago, hard-driving restaurant chef Nicky Morse was looking for a change of pace. So he joined a drag-racing team. Nicknamed “The Racing Chef, ” Morse lives in Delaware, Ohio, just north of Columbus, where the team is based. “It’s kind of unusual—I’m probably the only chef in the scenario that I’m in, ” he said recently by phone.
Over the last seven seasons, driver and chef have been teaching each other about cars and food. Morse, hired on the strength of his resume and a friend-of-a-friend relationship with a team member, definitely didn’t start as a race fan. “No, I didn’t know anything, ” he said. “I didn’t know anything about a car. But I’m learning a lot. ” Morse’s eclectic style has made him one of the biggest draws at an event the Coughlin family has organized a few times in connection with its Jegs Foundation for Cancer Research. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame, though, is that a couple of years ago he was a No. 1 pick on one of the Food Network’s “Top 5” shows. The theme was “Food on the Fly. ”
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