In Yes, Chef!, twelve well-known chefs — some of whom have been in other cooking competitions — have been nominated by friends, family and coworkers for the competition, hosted by Martha Stewart and José Andres. They weren’t nominated for their amazing cooking skills, though; they were nominated because there is one aspect of their personality that the person who nominated them thinks is holding them back.
Opening Shot: Over scenes from Season 1 of Yes, Chef!, Martha Stewart, standing next to her co-host, José Andrés, says, “For far too long, the pressure of the kitchen has been an excuse for out of control behavior.”
The Gist: What are those behaviors that are getting in the contestants’ way? Well, it’s a lot of the usual ones you’ve seen on cooking shows: Outlandish arrogance, hotheadedness, indecisiveness, overthinking, inability to collaborate, being thrown if something isn’t perfect, etc. The idea is that the chefs will need to work together and try to keep those behaviors in check. The winner of the contest gets $250,000, but Stewart, Andrés and the producers hope they learn how to get past that fatal flaw in their behavior and achieve even greater success.
In the first cooking challenge, the hosts/judges picked three pre-planned menus; the three chefs that submitted them are team captains. They take ten minutes to collaborate with their teams on a four-course menu, then they are given the choice of working with that or throwing it out and working with the menu they submitted. Michelle Francis and Zain Ismail choose the menus they collaborated on, while Katsuji Tanabe chooses to use his already-selected menu, throwing out everything they planned. After all, he can just micromanage everyone to success, he figures.
The winning team gets immunity, and the captain of that team has to pick whom he or she will compete in a cook-off with. If the person picked loses the cook-off, that person is eliminated. If the person picked wins the cook-off, he or she gets to pick the chef to eliminate from the two losing teams.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Yes, Chef! is basically Top Chef if you took the worst chef behavior from that show and made it part of the contest. In fact, the show is produced by Magical Elves, the same production company responsible for Top Chef.
Our Take: The thing we wonder about with Yes, Chef! is that is the conceit that the chefs are there because of their lousy work behavior really going to come to anything. We’re thinking directly about Katsuji, who has the most reality cooking competition experience among the contestants, most notably on Top Chef. The producers know Katsuji well, and they know how arrogant he is and how easily he stirs the pot. They also know that he has copious skills. All of this is a recipe for him being set up as the “bad guy” of the season, and it’s pretty obvious he knows it, given his behavior during the first episode.
We just have no idea if anyone else is going to learn the art of collaboration, or the ability to not micromanage, or gain some confidence in the span of however many episodes the season lasts (we’re thinking ten). Without that aspect being the main thrust of the series, the show really isn’t much different than its cousin Top Chef, which just means that the show is Top Chef with a broadcast network budget.
This isn’t exactly the first reality competition rodeo for Stewart and Andrés, and they are smooth, empathetic, funny and tough-when-they-need-to-be. They are observing how each of the chefs collaborate during each cook, but it doesn’t feel like the collaboration or lack thereof factors into their choices of which teams win and which are up for elimination. Their claim is that the chefs’ dishes will reflect them suffering from their usual bugaboos will be seen in their food, but we wonder why their behavior during the cook can’t factor in. As of the first episode, who wins and who doesn’t is judged solely on the quality of the contestants’ dishes.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After the first elimination, the chefs go back to their lounge and talk about how tough the competition is going to be.
Sleeper Star: At this stage of the game, it’s hard to distinguish many of the non-Katsuji contestants from one another. We do like that Torrece Gregoire insists that everyone, including Martha Stewart, call her “Chef T.”
Most Pilot-y Line: As usual, the montage of last-minute plating and preparations going on as the last 30 seconds count down feels like complete and total horsehockey.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Yes, Chef! may just be a bigger-budget version of Top Chef, but the show has gotten together a group of 12 excellent chefs and two cooking show experts as hosts/judges. It may not break new ground, but the season should be entertaining.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.