If you’re a young chef who might need some encouragement to step outside of your comfort zone, Kristen Kish has some advice for you – this is your time to play.
Kish, who has already had her fair share of cooking television with her win on Top Chef Season 10, as well as her hosting gigs on several cooking shows, has now become the host of National Geographic’s latest entry into the cooking genre, Restaurants at the End of the World. In the new series, Kish travels to some of the most remote restaurants across the planet, while meeting the interesting and heartfelt people that cook the food along the way.
But of course, in a series such as this, Kish gets the opportunity to try new things and invent new flavors, like reindeer tongue, which might be a little too adventurous for novice cooks. Kish, however, had some great advice for home chefs – that this is the time where you have freedom to do whatever you want, where for her, she has to run restaurants, and doesn’t have that chance to get out there and play in the kitchen as much. As she explains:
More control has to be put into place, meaning you’re running a business and you're running it successful so you have to be careful about food costs, you need to be careful about shitty reviews if you cook something wrong, all these different things, and the element of play and experimentation gets less and less, or it least it has for my career.
In fact, Kish even says that she herself has to make an effort to try and do it more – which is why it’s a great opportunity for chefs at home to go out there and have fun and not be afraid to make mistakes, which is one of the goals of Restaurants at the End of the World.
You have the opportunity to play and experiment and to mess up without anyone’s judgement – maybe except for your own, judging yourself – but that’s the beauty of it. I need to do better at it outside of the restaurant and just play more in the kitchen, but if you don’t have anyone waiting to write you a crappy review, you are in this space, in the prime space, to experiment with food and that’s exciting, for me, because I wish I could do that more often.
Kish also suggested that while you can’t necessarily get reindeer tongue at your local grocery story, you can pick up beef tongue – and that, in of itself, is a great step in the right direction of stepping out of your comfort zone.
When it comes to cooking shows, I’m pretty much one of the biggest fans out there. While I had watched them as a kid with my mother, like Top Chef or the famous Hell’s Kitchen, I only just started to get into them more as I got older. From some of Gordon Ramsay’s shows, such as the new Next Level Chef, to the best baking shows on Netflix. All of these shows have pushed me to be a better cook.
Even so, nothing has come as close to the experience of watching Restaurants at the End of the World and genuinely feeling inspired to go out and try new things -- or, at the very least, check out beef tongue.
Restaurants at the End of the World premieres weekly on National Geographic at 10 p.m. as part of the 2023 TV premiere schedule, before streaming on Disney+ the day after.
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