''Yes, Chef!'' is an American
reality competition
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...
cooking show
A cooking show, cookery show, or cooking program (also spelled cooking programme in British English) is a television genre that presents food preparation, often in a restaurant kitchen or on a Television studio, studio set, or at the host's p ...
television series that premiered on
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
on April 28, 2025. The series is hosted by
José Andrés
José Ramón Andrés Puerta (; born 13 July 1969) is a Spanish-American chef and restaurateur. Born in Spain, he moved to the United States in the early 1990s and since then, he has opened restaurants in several American cities. He has won a num ...
and
Martha Stewart
Martha Helen Stewart (, ; born August 3, 1941) is an American retail business woman, writer, and television personality. As the founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, focusing on home and hospitality, she gained success through a variety ...
.
Production
On February 13, 2025, it was announced that NBC had ordered the series with José Andrés and Martha Stewart as the hosts and
executive producers
Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the production of media. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights or royalties). In films, ...
.
On April 3, 2025, the chefs were announced.
Format
Contestants on ''Yes, Chef!'' are professional chefs that have been nominated by their supervisors, peers, or family members because of their inability to control the personal issues interfering with their performance in the kitchen (egotism, stubbornness, indecisiveness, etc.), despite their culinary potential. Hosts Andrés and Stewart guide these chefs through a series of challenges designed to test both their cooking skills and their behavior. The ultimate winner receives a cash prize of
US$
The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...
250,000.
Each episode (with the exception of the finale) features two challenges:
Main Culinary Challenge: Early in the season, the Culinary Challenges were team exercises designed to test the chefs' leadership, cooperation, and technique. The judges select the winning team and one chef from either team will be crowned that episode’s Most Valuable Chef (MVC), who receives immunity from elimination. Later episodes feature individual Culinary Challenges, with the winning chef of each challenge receiving the MVC title.
Cook-off: Initially a head-to-head challenge between the MVC and a member of the losing team (chosen by the MVC); if the MVC wins the cook-off, the nominee is eliminated from the competition, but a victory by the nominee allows that chef to select another chef from the losing team to be eliminated. In later episodes, the MVC is exempt from the cook-off and is asked to select which two chefs will compete, sometimes choosing which ingredients or restrictions the at-risk chefs receive; the loser of the cook-off leaves the competition.
Chefs
Elimination table
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Episodes
Critical response
Notes
References
External links
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{{NBC programming (current and upcoming)
2020s American cooking television series
2020s American reality television series
2025 American television series debuts
American English-language television shows
Cooking competitions in the United States
Reality cooking competition television series
NBC reality television shows
Television series about chefs
Television series by Magical Elves