Deanna Ortiz
Deanna Ortiz is one highly ambitious and in-demand comic, shown by the fact she won the 2022 Chicago Reader readers’ poll for Best Stand-up of the Year and was also nominated in the Reader’s 2020 reader poll for best podcast for her series “Crushes!”
She also loves to get sauced and cook in her regular Instagram series “Drunk Cooking” and is ending a very busy January (including shows in Ireland) with a string of shows across Chicago. The best place to see her may be on Sunday, January 28 at the Lincoln Lodge, where she’ll be competing in the “Sautéed Stand-up” show’s Tournament of Champions.
The “Sautéed Stand-Up” Tournament
“The ‘Sautéed Stand-up’ Tournament is a cooking and comedy competition where performers are grouped into teams and have to cook a whole ‘Chopped’-style meal while also performing,” says Ortiz. “The final dishes are judged by professional chefs, so you’ve really got to impress and that’s a fun challenge. There’s no big prize for winning the tournament outside of bragging rights for a whole year, but it was fun to win a contest before and get the chance to do it again among the best.”
Ortiz was born and raised in the suburbs, where the twenty-nine-year-old started doing stand-up before moving to the city eleven years ago. She was inspired to perform because “I listened to lots of comics in high school and was really taken with the performance aspect.”
Her comedy idols were some of the top names of the late 2000s, including Dane Cook, Chelsea Peretti, Chelsea Handler, Dan Levy and Sebastian Maniscalco. In fact, she was so devoted to them that she could recite their thirty-minute Comedy Central specials from memory.
“I was already the funny kid in class, but I never saw doing stand-up as a job option,” she says. “I started going to open mics and local indie shows and that cemented my obsession with performing and telling jokes onstage.”
Ortiz engaged her love of cooking with her passion for comedy during the pandemic shutdowns, when she used her experience from a semester in culinary school to get buzzed and prepare meals in a hilariously messed-up fashion in her “Drunk Cooking” videos on Instagram. One recent episode shows her botching nearly every aspect of making a BLT, while offering bleary commentary on the attempts and telling stories of her daily life.
“I loved to pretend that I had my own cooking show when I would get drunk in my house, and eventually I started recording it,” she says. “The food is normally drunk food I would make in my apartment, but I try to elevate it with funny things that happen and add peppered-in cooking hacks, all through the persona of someone who’s drunk.”“In one episode, I misplaced the pepper and got into a whole drama series about where it went, and there was also an episode where I couldn’t stop breaking eggs on the floor. It’s just the silliness and madness that comes with cooking drunk in your home with knives and fire.”
Ortiz also applies her hosting and producing talents to the popular podcast “Crushes! With Deanna Ortiz,” in which she and her guests discuss their crushes on favorite celebrities and other favorite aspects of living. A game on each episode called “Hot or Just Tall?” features funny discussions of whether a male celebrity is, well, hot or just tall.
The segment has grown so popular that Vulture spotlighted it, detailing an episode where the subjects included Harry Connick Jr., John Legend and Jason Derulo. Ortiz also sparked a fierce debate about the hotness of jugglers by asking, “If you see a man on the street and he suddenly pulls out oranges, do you talk to him?” and always engages guests in answering her intimate questions about dating.
“I’ve really been able to ingratiate myself into the scene and really get all that there is to get from the benefits of the Chicago comedy scene,” Ortiz says. “I have some aspirations to move to a coast, but right now I’m able to make money and perform stand-up every night, so I’d really have to have something great to take me out of here.”
Deanna Ortiz is on Instagram @deannaortiz_. , where visitors can find her full schedule of shows. “Crushes! With Deanna Ortiz” is on all podcast streaming platforms.
Ortiz will perform in the “Sautéed Stand-up” Tournament of Champions at 7:30pm Sunday, January 28 at the Lincoln Lodge, 2040 North Milwaukee. Tickets are $12 for general admission and $30 for Chefs Table seating with samples from throughout the competition. Visit thelincolnlodge.com for tickets.
