'Yes, Chef' Finds an Original Recipe Among Cooking Competitions

For many people, cooking is therapeutic. The new NBC cooking competition Yes, Chef – which is co-hosted by Martha Stewart and Chef José Andrés – takes that sentiment literally. The hot-headed, egotistical, perfectionistic, and otherwise flawed chefs who appear on the show will be judged by their skills inside the kitchen and the personal growth they display outside of it. 

“The chefs each have something to overcome,” Martha Stewart told DISH in an exclusive interview ahead of the show’s premiere. “This is a competition show, so they have to show off their cooking skills at the very highest level, while coping with anger, with depression, maybe with insecurity. And our job – Jose’s and mine – are to guide them in their cooking, but also give them some good life lessons from our experience.”

While the secret ingredient of Yes, Chef may be self-improvement, the actual cooking competitions are deliciously spicy and complex (Magical Elves, the production company behind Bravo's Top Chef, are the show's producers). In the first episode, team captains are given the opportunity to move ahead with the meal plan they came up with as a group, or to throw away the team’s suggestions and return to their preferred menu. In that same episode, one competitor is allowed to choose the country whose cuisine they will emulate, while the other must select ingredients from another. 

If the competitions are designed to test the contestants willingness to compromise and adapt, the format of Yes, Chef also allows them ample opportunities to feed their dark side (the first elimination is a four-course meal of brutality and betrayal). But according to Chef Andrés, the heat of the kitchen is an oven where great leaders will rise. 

“Chefs are natural leaders. They have to be,” the James Beard Award-winning chef says. “Because in the heat of the moment when you are in a restaurant kitchen at 9pm on a Friday night when the tickets are coming, everybody is looking for the person in charge of the line.” Andrés adds that “everyone is going to have a different expectation of what perfection is, and this competition is exactly that. We are throwing them a lot of bones. We are throwing them very difficult challenges [and] ingredients. And they know if they don’t do their best, they may be eliminated that week.”  

Ironically, the team-focused competitions in early episodes mean that some chefs may be eliminated even after giving their best effort. And that’s another flavor in the show’s appealing recipe: There’s an element of strategy that’s reminiscent of Survivor. Depending on the results of the head-to-head cook-offs, the contestants are the ones who decide who goes home, and that power allows them to indulge in some of the same sketchy behaviors that landed them on the show to begin with. 

“Don’t tell me this is not like watching sports, but with food,” Chef Andrés says in the second episode. He’s not wrong, but he’s not entirely right either. Like many of the best restaurants, Yes, Chef fuses a number of styles and techniques into something singular and delicious.

Watch new episodes of Yes, Chef Monday nights at 10 ET/ 9 CT on NBC with DISH. Not a DISH subscriber? Follow this link to find the best offer and subscribe to DISH today!