Has “Hell’s Kitchen” boosted business at Gargoyles?

In case you missed Tom Nash’s story in The Somerville News or Donna Goodison’s piece in Friday’s Boston Herald or the Inside Track piece in Thursday’s Herald, we’re here to tell you: There’s a celebrity chef in town, he works at Gargoyles on the Square (219 Elm St) and his fame will come to a head on national TV on Tuesday night.

In honor of the occasion, there’s a viewing party at Gargoyles on Tuesday night (August 10) at 8pm.

The chef is Medford Square resident Jason Santos, 34. The TV show is Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen, a so-called reality program in which chefs compete for the “prize” of working at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill in London.

Now in its seventh season, Hell’s Kitchen averages seven million viewers per episode. Santos, who has worked at Gargoyles for five years, now has a publicist and (at last count) 427 followers on Twitter.

In the wake of such newfound popularity, you might think Santos would be hard to get a hold of. In fact, we were able to reach him Thursday afternoon by simply dialing Gargoyles. But first, we spoke to co-owner James Conforti (pictured above), who picked up the phone.

Conforti was confident he could promote from within — choosing one of his five line cooks — to replace Santos as executive chef, if Santos were to take the job in London. He added that Gargoyles had been getting more inquiries about jobs since Santos began appearing on television.

How has “Hell’s Kitchen” boosted business at Gargoyles? Conforti noted business was up roughly 15 percent from last summer. “Of that 15 percent, I’d [credit] 10 percent of it to the show,” he says. The other five percent he attributes to a slight recovery from last summer’s recession.

When Santos came to the phone, he seemed amazed and bemused by his celebrity status. “I was with Theo Epstein yesterday on the field at home plate. That never would have happened before the show.”

He also shared that this was not his first brush with national television. When he was 19, he appeared on the “Today” show for a cooking segment. He does not remember what he cooked. At the time, he was working at Tremont 647 in the South End. It was for this appearance that Santos decided to dye his hair blue. “I’ve had blue hair for almost 16 years now,” he says proudly.

This particular season of Hell’s Kitchen was recorded nearly a year and a half ago. Yet millions of people believe everything could change for Santos on Tuesday night. “The American public have no idea,” he says. “I have people ask me if I go to L.A. every single week to tape the show.”

He is especially bemused by how the public has linked him romantically to Holli Ugalde, a chef from California whom he opposes in the season finale. “One hot-tub scene, and people ask if we’re married and if we live together,” he says.

On Thursday night we stopped by Gargoyles to snap photos of Conforti and Santos to accompany this blog post. Conforti was in the house, but “the chef just left the building,” he told us. Santos was bound for Providence to do a cooking segment on the “Rhode Show” — an early morning program on the local Fox affiliate.