Tim Harris, a local father of two, is not a chef by trade. Cooking is more of a hobby for him. But he just proved to some of America’s most well-known chefs that he knows his way around the kitchen … and a grocery store.

“I’ve never been to culinary school or anything,” Harris tells Axios.

Context: Harris, who’s an auditor for an insurance company just across the Charlotte border in Fort Mill, recently won on an episode of Guy Fieri’s popular Food Network show “Guy’s Grocery Games.”

• The competitive cooking show, also known as “Triple-G,” features chefs competing in a series of intense cooking challenges, where they must navigate supermarket aisles and strategically shop for ingredients to create dishes under time constraints.

“Let’s show America that dads can really rock the kitchen,” Guy told the four contestants at the beginning of the episode, which aired Wednesday, June 14, as Triple G’s Father’s Day special.

Why it matters: The show put a local man on the national stage. The Food Network reaches tens of millions of households, and Guy Fieri is one of the most well-known stars on the network.

• Plus, Harris’s episode showcases dads in the kitchen. Harris, who describes himself as a “full-time husband and father of two,” says he does about 90-95% of the cooking for his household.

Flashback: “When the world shut down, I was cooking three meals a day every day,” Harris said, referring to the pandemic. “I started trying to remember recipes that I had when I was out with my wife in NoDa and Uptown, and trying to recreate them at home because we couldn’t go anywhere.”

• Right before the pandemic, Harris decided he was going to start having fun on social media and “start posting pictures of food like the old days.” So he created an Instagram account called Dapper Dads Kitchen.
• The account is how he got discovered by The Food Network.

What’s next: Harris, who grew up as a military brat, says he hopes to use the prize money to travel the world with his kids like he got a chance to when he was their age.