Long before Lauren Covas won “Chopped” in 2016 or “Supermarket Stakeout” three years later, she was at her grandmother’s sink in the Little Portugal neighborhood of Newark, N.J.
“When you walked in, it was not like you could just stand there,” Covas, 42, remembers. “You were put to work. Potatoes needed peeling. The greens in the sink needed to be washed.” It was an apprenticeship in Portuguese cooking disguised as family time.
During high school, she worked in restaurants, bussing tables, washing dishes and doing food prep. She loved the camaraderie in the kitchen and saw firsthand in the dining room how much food can uplift people. The experience convinced her that she wanted to make a career of cooking, and her mother encouraged her to go to culinary school.
At the New England Culinary Institute, every rotation was a challenge — in the best way. “If you were in bake shop, you were in bake shop at 3 in the morning, because that’s when the bread was made. Same with the butcher shop. The schedule was six months on, then six months off, so you [would] have time to intern somewhere and be really hands-on.”
Photos courtesy of Lauren Covas
Her first internship was at the Boca Raton Resort & Club (now The Boca Raton). “It was such a great program,” Covas says. “They put you up for housing, supplemented your meals and offered a stipend. It was such a great experience that I stayed a little longer — almost a year.”
From Boca, Covas moved to Las Vegas, where she worked at the Four Seasons Hotel before landing at Picasso, Spanish chef Julian Serrano’s celebrated restaurant at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino, which later earned two Michelin stars. She stayed nearly four years, absorbing a level of discipline and technique she credits with shaping how she cooks today. She was the only female chef on staff, and she recalls a time when women were far less common in professional kitchens — and were often underestimated.
The discipline stayed with her, but her own cooking developed in a more relaxed direction.
“I always say my food is rustic, but not in a messy way,” she explains. “I cook real food. I don’t put 20 different sauces on something. There’s nothing wrong with Michelin-starred restaurants, but it’s not my style. Being Portuguese, it’s a lot of seafood, a lot of fresh vegetables and just cooking them in a way that holds their integrity. That’s really important to me.”
Making It Work
After moving back to her home state in 2006, Covas opened Chef’s Place in New Brunswick, N.J., with a menu she describes as “diner food on steroids.” Case in point: Rather than ordinary French toast, she offered brioche stuffed with bananas and Nutella, finished with homemade pecan caramel sauce and fresh whipped cream.
A year and a half after opening the restaurant, she became pregnant with her first son, and the balancing act began. She kept a bouncy chair in the kitchen next to the chest freezer while she worked the line. Upstairs, she had an air mattress where she could nurse him during breaks.
Covas eventually closed Chef’s Place, and then her second restaurant, Café Café in Newark, giving her more time to be present with her family. Then, to her surprise, requests for private events began coming in.
“I realized there was real money to be made with parties,” Covas says. She shifted fully into catering, which allowed her to build her work schedule around motherhood. “I love that hosts can have it all and enjoy their guests without worrying if the food is too hot or too cold.” Covas favors dishes that hold well, look beautiful and taste good at room temperature.
Today, Covas operates Chef Covas Catering from a commercial kitchen in Long Branch, N.J. There’s no dining room or storefront; instead, the space accomodates cooking classes and a steady stream of catering orders.
Her two sons, now 16 and 13, have become an unofficial part of the operation. Covas describes them as “very, very involved when it comes to Mom and her job,” helping at events the same way she once helped at her grandmother’s stove.
When her sons were younger, Covas had one rule at the table: They had to at least try everything. Rather than relying on chicken nuggets and fries, she exposed them to the foods the adults were eating. Both developed sophisticated palates.
“I pity the women who marry them, because they have expensive taste,” she says. “Our sushi bill can range in the high $200s, and that’s on a good day.”
In Front Of The Camera
Television entered the picture when a friend sent Covas a casting call for “Chopped,” convinced she would be a natural, even though she had never appeared on camera. The idea wasn’t completely far-fetched: As a child, Covas had dreamed of having her own cooking show, watching Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray on the Food Network and mimicking them at home.
Within two days of responding to the ad, she received a call back. She interviewed, was cast and competed under her married name, Lauren Van Liew, winning her episode in 2016. Three years later, a casting director contacted her through Instagram about “Supermarket Stakeout.” Covas traveled to Arizona for filming and won that competition, too. She uses Covas, her maiden name, professionally today.
Beyond the bragging rights, television gave her the opportunity to clarify her career choices.
“I wanted to correct any assumptions that I had babies and gave up on my dreams,” she explains. “I didn’t. I just modified them to work for what I needed at the time.”
Back To Her Roots
In 2025, Covas released her debut cookbook, “Little Portugal: Bold and Flavorful Portuguese Cooking from My New Jersey Kitchen,” a collection of family recipes and reimagined classics from her childhood. She’s also preparing to open a market in Little Silver, N.J., this fall.
She envisions the market as an extension of her grandmother’s kitchen, stocked with cured meats, imported olive oil and pastries made from family recipes that her grandmother never wrote down. It will also include Portuguese-influenced sandwiches and salads — providing another way for Covas to bring the food she grew up on to a wider audience.