Your new neighbor might be the Next Food Network Star.

Melissa d’Arabian is one of three finalists in the cooking challenge known as “The Next Food Network Star,” which airs at 9 p.m. Sundays on The Food Network. A 40-year-old, stay-at-home mom, Melissa and her husband Philippe d’Arabian just moved to the Holmes Point area in Kirkland next to Juanita Bay Park with their four young daughters, because of his job at Microsoft.

To welcome the family to Kirkland, the community gathered at Hector’s Restaurant Sunday for a special viewing of the show and dinner with the d’Arabians.

“She’s so bubbly and light – it’s so lovely to see,” said Lisa Nelson during the event, who’s husband Chris is the chef and general manager of Hector’s.

Chris said he was surprised when Melissa’s husband called and asked if they could arrange to have the viewing at Hector’s.

“It sounded like a cool thing to do,” he added.

Melissa said she didn’t grow up privileged. But she’s had a colorful life. A two-time “first-runner-up” in the Miss Vermont pageant, she’s held various jobs in the hospitality industry — from restaurant waitress to hotel concierge, singer on a Mediterranean cruise ship, live-in cook for a wealthy family and business consultant. She met Philippe while both were working for The Walt Disney Company in Paris. Until very recently, they made their home in Keller, Tex.

She explained that her love of food and her attention to thrift came from her mom, a Navy physician.

“We grew up in the modest part of town (in locations from Tucson, Ariz. to San Diego, Calif. and Bethesda, Md.) and didn’t have much,” Melissa recalled. “My mom made everything from scratch. I’ve taken (cooking) classes here and there. I’m not a professional chef. When I moved to Paris … they look at food from a very different attitude. There is more emphasis on ingredients.”

She added that her French mother-in-law is “a phenomenal cook” but said she wouldn’t call Parisian cooking her mainstay.

“Ninety-five percent of my life was ‘before kids,'” Melissa explained. “My challenge now is to bridge cooking, up to age 37, with my new life with kids, cooking on a budget as a stay-at-home.”

She likes to think that her specialty is “bridging fine quality” with economy and ease in the kitchen.

So how did the busy, down-to-earth mom of four-year-old Valentine, three-year-old Charlotte and one-and-a-half-year-old twins Margaux and Oceane end up rubbing elbows with culinary hotshots such as Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri?

The Food Network holds open casting calls for “The Next Food Network Star” in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, but Melissa didn’t audition that way. She submitted a demo video last November, went to New York for an on-camera tryout in December and learned, just before Christmas, that she was picked as a contestant.

That really didn’t come as a shock, she stated.

“Anytime you apply, the sheer numbers, thousands of applicants for 10 slots,” can be intimidating, she remarked. “I have an MBA, but you don’t have to be an MBA to do that math.”

Yet, “My husband and I really thought this through,” said Melissa. “Did this make sense for our family? In some ways, I was less suprised because I had really thought it through, not just thrown my name out there on an impulse. I have a life mission, I do things very specifically.”

At the time of the first callback for “The Next Food Network Star,” Melissa said she and Philippe immediately asked, “Does this mean our family would have to move in New York?”

Although the couple loves the Big Apple, they were relieved to learn, from a family standpoint, that “many (Food Network personalities) live in their home states and travel. We decided, ‘We can manage.’ Would we be willing to move to New York if we had to? Yes, if we could afford to raise four kids there. One of the blessings of having so many responsibilities is that you’re careful what you wish for, in case it comes true.”

At the moment, Melissa said the d’Arabians are very content in Kirkland. In his former job as a consultant, her husband traveled Monday through Thursday year-round.

“Now the kids get to see him pretty much every night. To have dinner with us is the highest treat,” she said.

When the family first came to Washington a few weeks ago, she said Kirkland was not on their radar. While living in temporary housing in Redmond just before coming to Kirkland, the family attended the Kirkland Uncorked event and knew they wanted to live there.

Melissa loves the “beachy, lake feel” of Kirkland, combined with the “small, mountain town feel.”

“So far, this area has the infrastructure in place to satisfy our family needs and also to satisfy who we are as adults — great food, great culture and great outdoors.”

She added she won’t even mind the commute she’ll have to make on the weekdays to get her girls to school in Mercer Island.

“To love a city as much as we love Kirkland is amazing,” she said. “This is the kind of place we can live in forever.”

The fifth season of “The Next Food Network Star” ends Sunday, Aug. 2. For more information, visit www.foodnetwork.com/the-next-food-network-star/index.html.

Kirkland Reporter Editor Carrie Wood contributed to this report.