I find it hard to resist any new cooking competition show, so I bit on the latest one—NBC’s Yes, Chef, hosted by Martha Stewart, one of the world's top distributors of recipes they've never cooked, and Jose Andres, one of the world's greatest chefs. The angle on this show is that the contestants are all chefs who have “personal issues,” which holds true for so many chefs that the theme’s rendered useless. Even the name of the program gets under my skin. In a trailer for the show, Stewart says, “People don't know that ‘yes, chef’ is what chefs really say in the kitchen.” Seriously?
Anyone who's watched one reality cooking competition show notices how overused this phrase is. There's a 90-second YouTube video documenting every use of “yes, chef” on the FX TV show, The Bear. What’s Stewart talking about?
Often, contestants on these competition programs respond with, “yes, chef” to the presiding celebrity chef, or one who’s brought in as a guest, no matter what they say. And while this response is a standard reply in fine-dining kitchens, a reality show is not a commercial kitchen. Contests on Yes, Chef say “yes, chef” to Martha Stewart, who's not even a chef. She's an accomplished home cook, I'm sure.
Hearing “yes, chef” repeated robotically is so mind-numbing. It's a ritual of submission that some contestants say it a dozen or so times in one episode. To a certain extent, this prostration’s an attempt to curry favor before the godly chef, but it comes at the cost of a loss of dignity that offends the viewer’s ears with the rote repetition of a cliché. The supplicants who automatically say "yes, chef" to anything they hear from their kitchen authority figure give the impression that they'd respond like this even if the chef had just told them they were too dumb to be alive.
The Menu, a 2022 horror film that satirizes the pretensions of modern haute cuisine mocks the overuse of “yes, chef.” When head chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) claps his hands once, the minions in his brigade, who fear for their lives, shout "yes, chef" in unison. Slowik doesn't even have to say anything. This ritual is an enduring legacy of French chef Georges-Auguste Escoffier, who in the late-19th century developed a military structure to establish defined roles in the kitchen that lives on to this day. “Yes, chef” is the equivalent of “Yes, sir,” in the armed forces. Defenders of the term claim it’s necessary to cut through the chaos of a kitchen, but ER physicians, who work in a similar environment—and have much more demanding jobs—don’t expect everyone to say “Yes, doctor” during a resuscitation.
“Yes, chef” is an antiquated term that should be retired. The hierarchy Escoffier created with his “brigade” structure in kitchens has bred tyranny—the kind of behavior one can see on TV shows like Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, with all the browbeating, humiliation, yelling, and physical intimidation. “Yes, chef” connotes total obedience, whether or not the demand is reasonable. Many chefs are people of questionable character, so this is troubling. In such an atmosphere, is it surprising that so much sexual abuse has gone on in kitchens? During the #MeToo movement, the story about the "rape room”—the third-floor VIP lounge at NYC gastropub, The Spotted Pig—emerged. The nickname was coined by female employees who described the space as a site of repeated sexual harassment, assault and misconduct, often involving excessive alcohol consumption. Celebrity chef Mario Batali, a well-known sleazeball in his industry, got caught up in the scandal and his spectacular career was reduced to rubble. The “Red Menace,” as he was known to female servers in the rape room, is now retired in northern Michigan. The Spotted Pig didn't survive the scandal either. The one-time celebrity hotspot, closed in 2020.
I worked as a line cook in kitchens, the best of which was Wolfgang Puck’s Maui outpost of his acclaimed L.A. restaurant, Spago. Amazed and grateful that I was made a line cook at such a place in spite of having almost zero experience, I happily complied with the practice of saying "yes, chef.” Making it easier was the fact that both the head chef and the sous chef were cool guys who treated me well. But in the handful of cooking jobs I've had at inferior restaurants, I never gave that respect to my chef. In one of those jobs, the pompous chef told us he wanted us to say "yes, chef" to him, but he failed because everyone hated him.
I'm having a hard time hanging in there with Yes, Chef, although it’s amusing to watch Martha Stewart lord her grande dame presence over the groveling contestants with her withering appraisals of their cooking skills. It's no wonder New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser once called her an “ill-mannered dominatrix.” But it's so grating to hear Stewart say, “We will see you back in the kitchen shortly,” and the competitors responding in unison with "yes, chef,” as if they're talking to their cult leader. These people are so eager to bend the knee. The ass kissing’s just too much. When José Andrés says, "Chefs, see you next week,” the competitors reply together, “Yes, chef.” They sound like robots who need a software update so they can sound more like humans.
But sometimes, in disappointment, a competitor lets down their guard and sounds like a normal person. When Andrés told one of them, “Tonight is the end of the competition for you, chef,” the chef responded “heard.” “Heard” is what cooks say to fellow cooks in formal kitchens, not to chefs. Suddenly, the facade gets stripped away. The respect for a chef holding two Michelin stars goes up in smoke when the chance at the $250,000 prize evaporates.