New star on Food Network is part comedian, part cook

Forget the age-old curiosity about whether the chicken came before the egg. When considering the current career path of South Philly's Adam Gertler, one must ask, what came first - the yuks or the yolks?

"The weather in Philly is surely better than it is here," Gertler jokes from sunny Los Angeles.

Gertler, 31, is in L.A. putting postproduction touches on his first television series, Will Work for Food. Debuting next week on the Food Network (Monday, 8:30 p.m.), the show teams Gertler with unique workers of the industry. Mention that hanging with goat farmers and truffle foragers sounds like a cross between Travel Channel's Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Discovery's Dirty Jobs, Gertler giggles.

"Will Work is not a recipes show or us finding the most delicious 800-pound hamburger. It's about how we milk the goat and pasteurize the cheese to get that taste we love."

In 2008, Gertler advanced through all the challenges on The Next Food Network Star 4 before being beaten in the finale by Camden's Aaron McCargo Jr.

Still, landing his own show isn't a bad consolation prize.

The show wasn't the first time foodies had seen Gertler. Local food aficionados know him from the Smoked Joint, a lively Center City barbecue pit he co-owned and where he also served as executive chef from 2004 to 2006.

And a whole different audience knows better the funny side of Gertler, a class clown who moved to Hollywood to try his luck as a stand-up comic and an actor. After the Smoked Joint closed, Gertler was renowned for bits in Philly television commercials, area comedy troupes, and the Live Arts/Fringe Festival.

So was he funny first or foodie first?

"Funny first," says mom Sandy Gertler, fondly recalling his many comedy and song performances in the family's Long Island living room. "Ever since he was 5, Adam was a clown."

"I had a typical theater-kid story," Gertler concedes. "I was a clown who got in trouble for talking too much in class, was the worst athlete to put on a Little League uniform, and used to stage weekly pranks, like falling down stairs after eighth period."

In fourth grade, Gertler's teacher offered him the titular role in a production of Pinocchio - his as long as he behaved. Her ploy worked. He was hooked.

Gertler's childhood memories do have food as their focus. He talks wistfully of the appreciation he had for matzoh balls and smoked fish, and even sounds fond of his time spent in Weight Watchers ("I was husky") when he was in sixth grade.

"As a Long Island Jew, food and family go hand in hand," he says.

At Syracuse University, where he graduated in 1999, the drama major worked all four years as a short-order cook and planned elaborate cast parties with made-from-scratch delicacies for shows he starred in. "My performances often suffered because I spent too much time worrying about the parties," he says.

When he wasn't busy as a cook, he got bit parts on All My Children and Saturday Night Live. By 2002, he'd moved to Hollywood, winding up in a KFC commercial and at stand-up comedy venues such as the Laff Factory, where he did his food-laced "meat puppet" routine.

While demonstrating how to turn brisket into pastrami, the beef came to life as his mother, with green-olive eyes and slits for his hand and its mouth. "It was my take on a ventriloquist act, brave but not very funny," says Gertler. "Actually it was pretty horrific-looking."

Why Gertler didn't stay in L.A. or stick solely to acting and comedy, meat puppet or not, came down to pragmatism and family.

While living in California, Gertler had developed rubs, sauces and recipes for a barbecue concept with his brother, Keith, with whom he'd done catering events. In the meanwhile, Keith and his business partner got a loan for a restaurant space in Philly at the Academy House, giving birth to the Smoked Joint.

"I was doing all right in L.A.," says Adam Gertler. "But this was a unique opportunity to start a business with family with no cost to myself."

Besides, Gertler didn't think he'd found his niche. "As a comic or an actor, I wasn't the most beautiful or the funniest. I was just kinda there," he says. He remembered the theater adage - "If anything gets in the way, let it" - and decided to take a chance and move to Philly.

He says the the Smoked Joint was the best thing that could have happened to him. It was grad school and boot camp rolled into one. There he cooked for packed houses and ran one of the best karaoke nights in city.

"I figured I'd hate him when we met," says local PR consultant Ali Waks sarcastically. "We're both Jews from Long Island, cook, studied drama at Syracuse, and have moms with red hair who are amazing bakers."

Waks owned and operated Bella, a Lombard restaurant, in 2003. By 2004, she wound up as the "Smoked Joint Girl," an all-purpose job that encompassed media relations and collaborating with Gertler for their events. "Adam's vision for karaoke night - like all of our events - was a rock-and-roll circus. He wore a top hat, tails and a Batman tee. He played his harmonica and jumped over the bar. He made it awesome."

But the venture was short-lived. "The Joint" closed after only two years for myriad business reasons, says Gertler, with location being the most prominent.

"The closing was tough on me," he says. "I didn't cook at all for almost a year."

Instead, he waited tables at Amada, performed improv with Tongue 'N Groove, did local commercials, and wound up on stage for director Madi Distefano's Brat Productions.

Distefano met Gertler when he auditioned for Brat's 10th- anniversary performance of A 24-Hour The Bald Soprano in 2007.

"In Bald Soprano, he had fun making the other actors bust a gut and fall out of character," says Distefano. "He broke his chair in the final performance. Improv? Intuition? It was brilliant all the same."

Gertler used those improvisational skills, his humor, and his recipes from the Smoked Joint when he filmed The Next Food Network Star 4 early last year. Though he believed it was personality alone that carried him through the first few episodes, Gertler's smoked cooking was what turned him into a contender. Still, Gertler lost to McCargo.

"We were surprised Adam got as far as he did because he's not a chef. He's a very good cook," says Sandy Gertler. "But he can do anything he wants to do."

Bob Tuschman, senior vice president of programming for the Food Network and a member of The Next Food Network Star 4 selection committee, had the same thought.

"We wanted to do a food- jobs show for some time, but couldn't move forward until we found a perfect host - which was Adam," says Tuschman. "Adam's passion for food, quick humor, and guy-next-door quality, his willingness to try anything, made him ideal for Will Work for Food."

So here's Adam Gertler doing an entertaining and informative peek behind the scenes at some of the most unusual, outlandish and sometimes dangerous food jobs in the world. Running around with wine cavers in Napa Valley, sitting behind a monster drill with diamond bits that looks like a tank from Mad Max, lugging 150-pound sacks of oysters while boating through Louisiana's roughest waters.

"I haul muck, wade through concrete, hold onto boat rails so I don't fall into the water - on paper, this stuff seemed a whole helluva lot more fun," laughs Gertler. "But I'm having the time of my life, traveling, getting to meet these people and eat at those places. It's like a vacation. Whatever came first - foodie or funny - I'm here."