Guerrilla Seafood Taco made with hamachi crudo and uni on The Chef Show (screenshot; play arrow will not work)
Chef friend Brady Duhame suggested we watch The Chef Show. After dumpster-diving half a dozen episodes, we can see why. The interactions of Roy Choi, Jon Favreau and guest chefs are packed with good kitchen technique and preparation tips we can learn from, and the celebrity guests are a bonus (and sometimes a distraction) rather than the main event.
The show is a spinoff of the 2014 movie Chef, in which Favreau plays a guess-what who quits his restaurant job because of a conflict with his boss, has a personal crisis, then finds happiness operating a food truck. Roy Choi was an advisor on that show and now is the active driver of The Chef Show, but Faveau turns out to have quite a few kitchen chops as well. (All puns intended.) The fact is, not all great chefs are great philosophers we want to hear pontificating onscreen and not all celebrities are amusing when playing with food. If you are going to do a serious cooking show with personalities, this is the way to go.
In the kitchen at Guerrilla Tacos with chef Wes Avila, Rob Choi and Jon Favreau
We’d recommend you start with the three-episode sequence Pizzana/Guerilla Tacos/Hog Island in Season 1/Volume 2 then, for comic relief, watch Episode 1 of Volume 2 in which Roy Choi appears to be putting us on. He demonstrates perhaps the worst veg prep skills you’re likely to see from a CIA grad, and berates the others for using “big” chef’s knives rather than the little tiny knife he’s holding. (The guest this episode is Seth Rogen, which may explain the general atmosphere of befuddlement.)
The show has a website which offers recipes from the episodes but there are tantalizingly few of them. However, there’s a frame in each show where all the ingredients appear as part of an annoying animation, so you can screenshot it, copy the ingredients, then make the recipe using the very good in-show demonstration. The Chef Show is well worth your time. Check it out.
