**Gary Tromblee (center) cooking up a storm!**

Ah, the pitfalls of live TV – exploding head on with Murphy’s Law. In the clip you can watch here -- from News Channel 13 -- you can see Sticks and Stones co-owner Gary Tromblee up against the clock (and a non-co-operative grill) as he prepares one of S&S’s signature dishes: the Statler Mountain Chicken.

Statler refers to the cut of chicken, also known as the Airline Cut: a boneless breast with attached drumette. S&S serve theirs with onion, garlic & bacon in parmesan cream sauce -- along with chef's veggies & salt fingerling potatoes.

“It was a cool experience,” Gary told Schroon Laker recently.” A couple of things were out of my control. I got prepped via email about how much time we had, but it was different when we got there. The kitchen equipment worked earlier when they tested it, but didn’t work later on”.

The segment was organized by Gary’s fiancé’ Kylen Kline, who has a friend who works at the TV station.

“That show is pretty popular in the Capital District on Sunday morning because it airs right before the Today show. We’d seen it quite a few times.”

Was he nervous? “I was pretty prepared, but wasn’t that nervous”

This was not Gary’s first time on the small screen: he’s done segments for a couple of corporate restaurants, “but never in a time restraint like that”.

Before the segment Gary’s dilemma was what dish to choose? We (he and restaurant partner Steve Holmes and Chef Tony) struggled over which dish to feature. “We did want it to be a signature item and so we certainly wanted to cook a pizza, but that was impossible”.

“And then we tossed around a few different recipes. One of our most popular dishes at the restaurant is our Adirondack Eggplant Stack, but that wasn’t feasible to do on the show. So we ended up with the Statler Chicken. On the TV segment the chicken was pan seared. In the restaurant it is seared in the wood fired oven from Italy.

Gary says what’s not in the clip was what followed after a commercial break. The anchors invited Gary back and they ate the finished dish.

“It was such a great recovery. They were enthusiastic and raving about the dish, which made me feel a hell of a lot better about how the segment ended”.