Thursday nights on FOX now come with a Long Island rooting interest. Mike Catuosco Jr., a 24-year-old private chef from Commack, is one of the 18 contestants on the new season of Hell's Kitchen, the cooking competition Gordon Ramsay has been running for two decades. The season premiered Thursday, September 24, and new episodes air Thursdays at 8 p.m., streaming the next day on Hulu.

The season built for chefs his age

This is the show's 25th season, and to mark it the producers changed the rules of entry: every chef in the kitchen is 25 years old or younger. FOX unveiled the full cast in early September, a class of 18 drawn from kitchens across the country, all of them meeting Ramsay at an age when most cooks are still years away from running a station, let alone a pass.

The prize is the same one the show has always dangled, a head chef post at one of Ramsay's restaurants. For a competitor in his early twenties, that is a decade of line work compressed into one television season, which is exactly the bet every one of these 18 is making.

The Commack chef in the brigade

Catuosco grew up in Commack and has been working in kitchens since high school. He trained in culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University, then built a business a long way from any restaurant pass: he cooks as a private chef, plating tasting menus and running events in clients' homes across Long Island, the Hamptons, New York City and the wider Northeast.

Television is not entirely new territory for him. He has appeared on Serving the Hamptons and Vanderpump Villa, shows that follow the staff behind high-end hospitality. Cooking under Ramsay's eye is a different kind of exposure, and on his own site he calls the show his biggest culinary spotlight yet.

What the gauntlet looks like

The format has not softened with age. Contestants split into red and blue teams, cook signature dishes for Ramsay's judgment, then run real dinner services for a full dining room while he patrols the line. Someone goes home nearly every week until one chef is left holding the job.

The all-young cast changes the flavor of that grind. There are no 20-year kitchen veterans in this class to lean on, no grizzled sous chef who has seen everything. Whatever poise shows up on the line, these chefs brought it with them early.

How to watch a neighbor cook for his future

Hell's Kitchen airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. Eastern on FOX, with episodes available the next day on Hulu. The season opened September 24 and runs through the fall, which means a Commack name will be on Ramsay's brigade most Thursday nights for as long as Catuosco keeps surviving the cut.

Long Island has sent plenty of cooks into the world's kitchens, and it has adopted its share of television chefs. It does not often get to watch one of its own, this young, walk into the most famous kitchen on television. That part starts now, one Thursday at a time.