‘Chef’s Table’ Assembles Its Culinary “Avengers” for a Universe Beyond the Screen

During August’s inaugural Chef’s Table Festival in Park City, David Gelb watched Massimo Bottura, one of Italy’s most celebrated chefs, rescue a pizza. A cook working with Franco Pepe was about to discard a pie that hadn’t met the pizzaiolo’s standards when Bottura intervened and told him to fold it into a calzone. Then Bottura started saucing it, slicing it and feeding event attendees who had gathered to watch the spectacle unfold.

“I felt like it was scripted,” says Gelb, creator of Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Bottura was the series’ first subject in its 2015 premiere, and starred again in episode four of Chef’s Table: Pizza in 2022.

The four-day Utah festival and its follow-up Vegas weekender, Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table, which ran Sept. 18–20, brought chefs and viewers together for restaurant takeovers, collaborative dinners and a firsthand look at how the show is made. For Gelb, seeing its subjects cook together felt like an Avengers-style team-up. “Each episode of Chef’s Table is the individual story of a chef, and now it’s like a crossover where we have so many chefs from the show collaborating, hanging out,” he says.

In Vegas, Bottura DJed the marquee event, The Feast, and then cracked open a massive wheel of cheese onstage, making it rain Parmigiano Reggiano all over the crowd. Thomas Keller also hit the decks at Wynn’s Encore Beach Club, alongside DJ Clutch.

Bottura, who declines cooking at most food events nowadays, was driving when Gelb called to invite him to Utah and Las Vegas. “I didn’t even look at the calendar. I said yes because I trust them,” he says. That confidence stemmed from Gelb’s thoughtful, artful approach to Bottura’s original Chef’s Table episode.

In 2013, Gelb developed Chef’s Table after directing Jiro Dreams of Sushi. “Chef’s Table was a vision about telling not just how chefs cook, but why they cook,” he says. Netflix was the only outlet willing to take the pitch: a food show without a celebrity host, filmed with cinema cameras and lenses, with the drama coming from the chefs and their stories.

For years after its 2015 debut, Gelb had heard from viewers who wanted to taste the food onscreen but couldn’t get a reservation or make the trip to the restaurants featured on the show.

“We were always limited by the fact that audiences would only be able to see and hear the show,” Gelb says. “It has always been a dream to bring Chef’s Table to life in a way where people can experience it with all of their senses.”

Justin Connor, president of Chef’s Table Projects, approached Gelb and fellow executive producer Andrew Fried several years ago about taking Chef’s Table “360.” United Airlines now serves chef-designed menus in Polaris international business class on select long-haul routes, including Nancy Silverton’s burrata with braised leeks and beef brasato on flights departing Los Angeles. In-flight videos explain how the dishes came together. Through Airbnb, guests can make cavatelli with Kirby Shaw, executive chef of Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza, then sit down to a family-style meal.

“The brand itself is so low-ego, and it’s just an amplifier for incredible chef talent,” Connor says.

Netflix’s response when Gelb began taking the concept beyond its platform was highly supportive. “Their commentary was, ‘Can I come?’” Gelb says. Many of the executives who work on the series attended both events.

Other streaming hits have moved offscreen: Bridgerton’s Queen’s Ball invited fans into a Regency-style evening of music and dancing, while Stranger Things: The Experience combined live performances, effects and interactive adventures in Hawkins. Connor senses a wider appetite behind those shifts. “People are tired of a wholly digital experience,” he says. He envisioned the Park City and Vegas concepts as a food “un-festival,” seeking something different from the familiar circuit of tasting tents, small bites and plastic forks. Italy’s Ein Prosit provided a model in which visiting chefs cook in local restaurants, and guests choose whom they want to spend an evening with rather than racing between booths to sample everything.

“The culinary industry isn’t about the meet and greet,” Connor says. “It’s about experiencing hospitality, and it’s about getting to connect with people as they tell you their story, whether it’s in person or it’s through their food.”

Across seven days in Park City and Las Vegas, Chef’s Table’s first two outings encompassed more than 100 events. Connor says Park City drew more than 80 visiting chefs for its four-day run, while Wynn’s three-day Revelry featured more than 30 chefs from five continents. The culinary baseline, Connor says, was that “every single bite needed to be amazing.” Beyond that came what he calls the “unscripted, emergent moments” — encounters among chefs and guests “that you can’t plan for and that you can’t pay for.”

Gelb also brought in the filmmaking process. During live food shoots, his team demonstrated how it creates the series’ “food symphony” sequences, using cinema lenses and a camera dolly moving along tracks. Guests could eat a dish, then look at a monitor and see how the camera transformed it.

The team recorded podcasts and chef roundtables and filmed dishes for Plates, a video format developed with American Express and Resy. The shorter format gives Gelb another way to introduce chefs who haven’t had full episodes. But he says any expansion depends on protecting what attracted viewers in the first place, including giving chefs the ingredients and support to cook properly.

Sarah Thompson, executive chef of Casa Playa at Wynn Las Vegas and the 2026 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: Southwest, saw firsthand how closely guests had followed the series. “The show has done something rare, and it’s made people feel like they know a chef before they’ve ever sat down at their restaurant,” Thompson says. “People aren’t just there for the food. They want to feel like they’re part of the story, too.”

Through their participation in both cities, Thompson met Serigne Mbaye, the 2026 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: South and chef-owner of Dakar NOLA. “Honestly, I don’t go to festivals because I love being at the restaurant,” Mbaye says. “My restaurant’s busy, and I try to be there as much as I can.” Chef’s Table was different. “When they told me about it, I thought, what an opportunity to meet all the people who inspired me over the years,” he says.

At Wynn Revelry, Thompson cooked at the Icons Dinner and The Feast, while Mbaye participated in The Feast and, for a select group gathered in a Wynn villa, shared the Senegalese ataya tea ritual that closes the tasting menu at Dakar NOLA.

Aaron Paul was one of the fans of the series willing to travel for a taste. “When Chef’s Table landed on Netflix, it was such an obsession of mine,” says the Breaking Bad star. “Not only was I watching every episode, but I was tracking down those restaurants whenever I was traveling. I would make sure, ‘OK, is there a spot I learned about on Chef’s Table near me?’ It really had that impact on me.”

Paul arrived in Park City with Ambassadors Clubhouse, the Punjabi restaurant from the team behind two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana and one of New York’s most in-demand reservations. He brought two of his companies: The Only Caviar and Dos Hombres, the mezcal brand he co-founded with Breaking Bad co-star Bryan Cranston.

In Las Vegas, Paul and Cranston joined chef Sarah Glover to cook a massive seven-bone tomahawk ribeye over an open fire. Cranston leaned into the theatrics, taking a drill to the bone to the delight of onlookers. At the Icons Dinner, The Vampire Diaries actor and Brother’s Bond Bourbon co-founder Ian Somerhalder held court, sipping bourbon and mingling with guests as they made their way through the star-chef buffet.

Nancy Silverton, the 2014 James Beard Outstanding Chef winner behind Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, was profiled in volume three, episode three, in 2017 and still sees the show’s effect in her dining rooms. She says “a large percentage” of the diners in her restaurants are there because of Chef’s Table. Some guests tell her they have watched her episode dozens of times; others cry as they explain what it meant to them.

“No matter what level you’re at, what Chef’s Table did for all of us was priceless,” says Silverton.

Kwame Onwuachi, the 2019 James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year behind Tatiana in New York and Maroon at Sahara Las Vegas, was the subject of the second episode of volume seven in 2024. He participated in Park City after opening Maroon this spring; it is now one of Las Vegas’ hottest tables.

“Not everybody’s going to read a book. Not everybody’s going to read every single article, but some people are going to watch a TV show,” he says. “I think it expanded my audience.”

On Sept. 22, Onwuachi celebrated the release of his cookbook, All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever, at Lincoln Center Theater with cooking and conversation presented in the style of a late-night show. He is also building the team for a screen adaptation of his memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, first announced with A24.

An episode is not a prerequisite for being invited to cook at the festivals. Most of the chefs who participated at Wynn had not been featured on the series. The wider roster introduced attendees to internationally established and rising talent, including Mark Iacono of Lucali, one of New York’s most sought-after pizzerias; Rodolfo Guzmán of Boragó in Santiago, No. 23 on the 2025 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list; Alejandro Chamorro of Nuema in Quito, No. 10 on the 2025 Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list; Álvaro Clavijo of El Chato in Bogotá, No. 1 on the 2025 Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list; and Ukrainian architect-turned-pastry artist Dinara Kasko of Dinara Kasko Pastry Art, internationally known for geometric desserts created with 3D modeling.

“If I were able to, I would shoot 100 episodes per year,” Gelb says. The selection criteria remain “a chef who cooks with passion and purpose and tells a story with their cuisine.”

In Vegas, Friday’s sold-out, $1,000-a-ticket Icons Dinner at The Buffet marked 80 years since El Rancho introduced the first Strip buffet. Thomas Keller, featured in episode three of Chef’s Table: Legends in 2025, and Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon, whose Philadelphia restaurant, Kalaya, won the 2026 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant, anchored the connection to the series. Suntaranon opened Chef’s Table season seven in 2024. They were joined by eight-time James Beard Award winner Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster; James Beard Best Chef: South winner Nina Compton of Compère Lapin; three-time James Beard Award winner Alfred Portale of Zero Bond and Sartiano’s; and Doug Psaltis of Asador Bastian, a New York Times Best Restaurant in America.

Mason Royal, the chef at Phil Rosenthal and Silverton’s Max & Helen’s — one of Los Angeles’ most talked-about new restaurants, where waits can stretch four hours — brought his pancakes, which have a cult following, to Sunday’s Grand Revelry Brunch at Mizumi. (With no wait.)

The alumni’s role in deciding who enters this elite circle of talent became more formal in Las Vegas with the inaugural Chef’s Table Honors ceremony. Hosted by comedian Tom Segura, the invitation-only “chefs honoring chefs” event featured 2022 James Beard Outstanding Chef winner Mashama Bailey of The Grey in Savannah, as well as Bottura, Keller, and Silverton. Silverton honored Keith Corbin, the James Beard Award-nominated chef-owner of Alta Adams in Los Angeles.

The Chef’s Table Festival will return to Park City in summer 2027, and Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table will return to Las Vegas next year as well. Connor says additional cities could be announced in the coming months, while the United Airlines and Airbnb collaborations will continue. Gelb’s team also has footage, podcasts and conversations from Park City still to release.

“Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?” Gelb asks. “We’ll continue to experiment with that.”