A couple of years ago, Sam Zien was your typical unhappy slave to the grind. Director of operations for a biotech company based in Carlsbad, Zien spent years trying to like his job, but just couldn’t do it.

“I cannot stress to you how strong that hate was,” he said. “I’d been there eight years, and I was a classic case of ‘I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.’ The overly dramatic analogy that I like to use now is that, like an alcoholic or a drug addict, I had to hit bottom before I helped myself. I had to get to that point where I really, really hated what I was doing before I tried to find what I did want to do.”

Zien forced himself to think it through, going through the classified section of the newspaper, looking for job titles that might suit him.

“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. Maybe I’m just going about this the wrong way,’” he said. “Maybe I should just forget about having to work; having to make money and support a family and that stuff – my wife works, too. Maybe I should just answer the question of what would I do if none of that other stuff mattered.”

So he did. His first idea was that he wanted to go to Tokyo. Which got him thinking that maybe he could do a travel show for television. “I fell in love with the idea, and believed in it so strongly that I quit my biotech job to do it,” he said. The idea was to cater to the average Joe traveler – practical, inexperienced and on a tight budget. He hired a crew to help him shoot a pilot episode and was about to embark on his trip to Japan when the September 11, 2001 terrorist disasters happened.

In the face of that tragedy, Zien decided to rethink his traveling plans, but was stuck on the idea of a TV show. “I thought about how I’ve always loved to cook, and maybe I could apply the same sort of thinking to cooking,” he said. “Maybe I should do a cooking show for regular people… no fois gras, no white truffle oil, no ‘Peruvian mountain raised squab in a sesame-lime-soy marinade stuffed with braised forest turnips and wild inoki mushrooms in a hand pressed plum and raspberry glaze.’”

He called back his crew and shot the pilot episode: Him in his kitchen making one of his favorite salmon dishes – an average cook, sans culinary-speak. “I dropped something in the middle of making the dish,” he said “and we left that in the tape. We used little pop-ups on the screen, too – predominantly self-deprecating humor because I’m kind of goofy. I would speak directly to the camera like I was speaking to a friend, and if it warranted a response, one would pop up on the screen.”

“Sam the Cooking Guy”, which initially got horrible responses from the television industry reps he sent the pilot to, eventually ended up on Fox’s morning news twice a week, and became immensely popular.

“I cook everything,” he said of his preferred on-air recipes. “There is no one particular style. The only theme that’s consistent is that it’s all generally only a few ingredients and they’re all really easy to make. Because I’m not a chef, I say if I can make it, anybody can make it.”

After his segments on Fox news won two Emmy’s last June, Fox offered Zien a weekly half-hour show. The show now airs 16 times a week, on Fox and UPN on Saturdays, and the county station every day at 12:00 noon and 8:30 p.m.

To keep things fresh, Zien and his crew often shoot in different locations. They have shot in supermarkets, in Julian, on the deck of Bear Mountain in Big Bear, 150 miles out to sea on the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis, and will shoot in Las Vegas next month.

“I don’t want to be like Emeril and have the show be the same every time: come out of the kitchen and shake hands with the audience and cook,” he said. “I’m not dogging his show, but I’m trying to make mine as varied as I possibly can.”

This month, Zien will embark on his next escapade: an episode with the working title “Queer Eye for the Cooking Guy”.

Not wanting to offend anyone, Zien was initially skeptical when the owner of a Pacific Beach restaurant suggested the idea, which would involve gays and lesbians who are hopeless in the kitchen bringing fashion sense, decor advice or other talents in exchange for cooking lessons. The restaurant owner convinced Zien to talk to a gay friend, who thought the idea for the segment was great and eventually offered to help. Then Zien ran with the idea.

“I thought, what if we had some fun and did an ‘American Idol’-like first segment, where we had an audition to look for the guys,” Zien said. “But the key is, they’ve got to be guys that can’t really cook – they have to be basically helpless in the kitchen – and they have to bring to the show some fashion sense or design sense; something they can help me with. We’ll do a little trade: I’ll show them how to cook and they’ll fix me or whatever they think they need to do to me.”

The project gathered momentum, and more people signed on. Hamburger Mary’s agreed to host the auditions. “Really, I don’t want guys or women that can cook,” Zien reiterated. “It’s meant to be people that are helpless in the kitchen, like I’m helpless when I go shopping.”

Zien said that the auditions will not be “American Idol”-like in their intensity. Instead, candidates will only be asked to speak for two minutes about why they are a train-wreck in the kitchen and what they could bring to the show in terms of fashion, design or something else. “I’m not looking for someone to come in and remodel my house,” he said. “I’m just looking for fun TV.”

When asked what particular talents he might be hoping to benefit from, Zien said that he’s open to any kind of makeover or redecorating, as long as it’s not his kitchen. “My kitchen is my kitchen,” he said. “I painted it red when I started the show, and I don’t really want to do anything there. I didn’t want the traditional fancy cooking show kitchen. I came to the conclusion that that is not the kind of kitchen that most people have.”

For more information about the auditions at Hamburger Mary’s, email Zien at sam@thecookingguy.com, or visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com online for a link to his website. Organizers will send an announcement of the audition date to all those interested in participating.