Yes, Chef! Co-Host José Andrés Gets Why Chefs Are Stressed: "A Heavy, Difficult Profession, But..."
Humanitarian and Michelin-starred chef José Andrés admits that being a chef is tough, "but I can say the same thing about..."
On the new cooking series Yes, Chef!, the 12 competing chefs aren't just trying to showcase their command of the kitchen. They're also trying to show they can control their own emotions and hot tempers. But, in a new interview with Hasan Minhaj, co-host José Andrés said he gets why chefs are stressed — even if he says it's not as crazy as some popular, fictionalized cooking series make it out to be.
During the nearly hour-long interview, which also had the celebrity chef and humanitarian talking about issues like inequality and ongoing food crises, Minhaj asked José if "chefs are OK," pointing to the high-stress series The Bear as evidence.
And, soon enough, Yes, Chef!
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José admitted that every restaurant becomes a high-stress environment when the doors open for dinner, and suddenly, every customer is ordering everything from the menu. Add to that customers who order "garlic and shrimp, with no garlic and no shrimp!" and you've got a recipe for madness. He admitted that while he's never openly gotten exasperated with a difficult patron, he's certainly "felt it."
"It's a heavy, difficult profession, but I can say the same thing about being a miner," José said. "There are more difficult professions, but restaurants are beautiful."
José added that The Bear, which has put the rigors of the kitchen into the zeitgeist, is a bit overstated, though.
"The Bear is everything that happens in the lifetime of a restaurant condensed into the runtime of a show," he said. "My god, if every restaurant was the heavy moments of the bear…"
With this in mind, Minhaj asked if José and his Yes, Chef! co-host Martha Stewart were also "having mental breakdowns on this show?"
"No, but the chefs sometimes are," José teased before praising his co-host and fellow judge.
"Martha and I, we seem to agree even when we disagree with each other. What a lady. She's one of the best," he said. He also said the homemaking icon had plenty of stamina.
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"We finish filming and I'm like, 'OK, I'm tired. We have to start shooting again at 8 a.m.,'" he said. "She'll go out. She'll go to a sushi place, a cocktail place. I'm like, 'Martha, who are you?'"
Yes, Chef! premieres on Monday, April 28 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC following The Voice.
