During August’s inaugural Chef’s Table Festival in Park City, filmmaker David Gelb watched Massimo Bottura, one of Italy’s most celebrated chefs, instinctively rescue a pizza. A cook working alongside master pizzaiolo Franco Pepe was about to discard a pie that had failed to meet the rigorous standards of the kitchen when Bottura intervened. Instructing the cook to fold the dough into a calzone, Bottura quickly added sauce, sliced the creation, and began feeding it directly to the festival attendees who had gathered to watch the unscripted spectacle unfold.
“I felt like it was scripted,” says Gelb, the creator of Netflix’s acclaimed documentary series Chef’s Table. Bottura holds a foundational place in the show’s history, serving as the very first subject in its 2015 premiere season and returning to the franchise for the fourth episode of Chef’s Table: Pizza in 2022.
The four-day culinary gathering in Utah and its subsequent Las Vegas counterpart, Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table, which ran from September 18 to 20, successfully bridged the gap between acclaimed international chefs and devoted viewers. The events featured immersive restaurant takeovers, collaborative multi-course dinners, and a behind-the-scenes look at how the cinematic food series is produced. For Gelb, watching his subjects cook side-by-side felt like an Avengers-style superhero 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 notes.
The energy reached new heights during the Las Vegas weekend. Bottura stepped behind the DJ booth to headline the marquee event, appropriately titled The Feast, before dramatically cracking open a massive wheel of cheese on stage, showering the ecstatic crowd with Parmigiano Reggiano. Meanwhile, legendary chef Thomas Keller also took over the decks at Wynn’s Encore Beach Club, performing alongside DJ Clutch.
Reflecting on his participation, Bottura—who routinely declines invitations to cook at traditional food events—was driving when Gelb called to extend the invitation to Utah and Las Vegas. “I didn’t even look at the calendar. I said yes because I trust them,” Bottura explains. That unwavering confidence stems from Gelb’s thoughtful, deeply artistic approach to Bottura’s original profile in the series.
Gelb initially developed Chef’s Table in 2013 following the success of his critically acclaimed documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. “Chef’s Table was a vision about telling not just how chefs cook, but why they cook,” he explains. At the time, Netflix was the sole platform willing to take a chance on the pitch: a high-end food series completely devoid of a traditional celebrity host, filmed using sophisticated cinema cameras and specialized lenses, where the primary drama derived organically from the chefs and their personal life stories.
For years following the show’s 2015 debut, Gelb regularly heard from passionate viewers who desperately wanted to taste the extraordinary dishes flashing across their screens but found themselves unable to secure a reservation or make the long physical journey to the remote restaurants featured on the program.
“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 with a vision to take the brand “360.” That vision has steadily expanded into various experiential sectors. United Airlines now serves specially curated, chef-designed menus within its Polaris international business class cabins on select long-haul routes, including Nancy Silverton’s signature burrata served with braised leeks and beef brasato on flights departing from Los Angeles. Special in-flight video segments educate passengers on how the intricate dishes were conceived and prepared. Through partnerships with Airbnb, fans can learn to make cavatelli alongside Kirby Shaw, executive chef of the Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza, before sitting down together for a traditional family-style meal.
“The brand itself is so low-ego, and it’s just an amplifier for incredible chef talent,” Connor observes.
When Gelb first began taking the concept beyond the streaming platform, Netflix’s response was overwhelmingly supportive. “Their commentary was, ‘Can I come?’” Gelb recalls, noting that many of the television executives who work on the series actively attended both the Park City and Las Vegas gatherings.
This physical expansion mirrors a broader entertainment trend. Other major streaming hits have successfully crossed over into real-world activations, such as Bridgerton’s immersive Queen’s Ball, which invited fans into a Regency-era evening of music and dancing, and Stranger Things: The Experience, which combined live performances and special effects. Connor senses a profound consumer shift driving these changes. “People are tired of a wholly digital experience,” he says.
When planning the Park City and Vegas concepts, Connor envisioned a food “un-festival,” intentionally breaking away from the predictable circuit of crowded tasting tents, tiny paper plates, and plastic forks. He looked to Italy’s renowned Ein Prosit festival as a model, where visiting chefs cook within established local restaurants and guests deliberately choose who they want to spend an evening with, rather than frantically racing between booths to sample everything in sight.
“The culinary industry isn’t about the meet and greet,” Connor emphasizes. “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 action-packed days split between Park City and Las Vegas, the inaugural outings encompassed more than 100 individual events. Connor reports that Park City drew more than 80 visiting chefs for its four-day run, while Wynn’s three-day Revelry featured more than 30 chefs hailing from five continents. The absolute culinary baseline, according to Connor, was that “every single bite needed to be amazing.” Beyond the food came what he describes as the “unscripted, emergent moments”—spontaneous encounters among chefs and guests that “you can’t plan for and that you can’t pay for.”
Gelb also integrated the actual filmmaking process into the festival experience. During live food preparation shoots, his production crew demonstrated how they craft the series’ signature “food symphony” sequences, utilizing specialized cinema lenses and a camera dolly moving smoothly along tracks. Festival guests could eat a freshly prepared dish and then immediately look at a video monitor to see how the camera’s mechanics transformed the culinary creation into art.
The team also recorded podcasts, hosted chef roundtables, and filmed dishes for Plates, a short-form video format developed in partnership with American Express and Resy. This concise format offers Gelb another avenue to introduce talented chefs who have not yet been featured in a full-length episode. However, he maintains that any future expansion remains strictly contingent on protecting the core values that initially attracted viewers to the show, including ensuring that participating chefs receive the proper ingredients and institutional support required to cook at their highest level.
Sarah Thompson, executive chef of Casa Playa at Wynn Las Vegas and the 2026 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: Southwest, witnessed firsthand how deeply attendees had connected with 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 her participation in both festival cities, Thompson connected with 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 admits. “My restaurant’s busy, and I try to be there as much as I can.” But Chef’s Table presented an entirely different proposition. “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 for both the exclusive Icons Dinner and The Feast, while Mbaye participated in The Feast and hosted an intimate gathering inside a Wynn villa, sharing the traditional Senegalese ataya tea ritual that concludes the tasting menu at Dakar NOLA.
Hollywood heavyweights also showed up as dedicated fans willing to travel for the experience. “When Chef’s Table landed on Netflix, it was such an obsession of mine,” says Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul. “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 alongside Ambassadors Clubhouse, the acclaimed Punjabi restaurant from the team behind two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana and one of New York’s most competitive reservations. He also represented two of his own ventures: The Only Caviar and Dos Hombres, the mezcal brand he co-founded with Breaking Bad co-star Bryan Cranston.
Later in Las Vegas, Paul and Cranston teamed up with fire-cooking specialist Sarah Glover to grill a massive seven-bone tomahawk ribeye over an open flame, with Cranston playfully taking a drill to the bone to the amusement of onlookers. At the Icons Dinner, The Vampire Diaries actor and Brother’s Bond Bourbon co-founder Ian Somerhalder held court, pouring bourbon and mingling with guests as they navigated the star-studded chef buffet.
Nancy Silverton, the 2014 James Beard Outstanding Chef winner behind Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, was profiled in the third volume of the series in 2017 and continues to experience the enduring commercial and emotional impact of the show inside her dining rooms. She notes that “a large percentage” of the diners frequenting her establishments are there directly because of Chef’s Table. Some visitors tell her they have watched her specific episode dozens of times; others openly weep while explaining what the narrative meant to them personally.
“No matter what level you’re at, what Chef’s Table did for all of us was priceless,” Silverton says.
Kwame Onwuachi, the 2019 James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year behind Tatiana in New York and Maroon at Sahara Las Vegas, was featured in the second episode of volume seven in 2024. He participated in the Park City festival shortly after launching Maroon this spring, which has quickly cemented its status as one of Las Vegas’s hottest reservations.
“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,” Onwuachi reflects. “I think it expanded my audience.”
On September 22, Onwuachi celebrated the release of his latest cookbook, All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever, at the Lincoln Center Theater with an interactive evening of cooking and conversation formatted like a late-night talk show. He is also actively building the creative team for a screen adaptation of his bestselling memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, initially announced in development with A24.
Appearing in an episode of the show, however, is not a strict prerequisite for being invited to cook at the festivals. The majority of the culinary talent that participated at Wynn had never been featured on the television series. The expanded roster introduced attendees to a diverse mix of internationally established leaders and rising stars, including Mark Iacono of Lucali, one of New York City’s most sought-after pizzerias; Rodolfo Guzmán of Boragó in Santiago, ranked No. 23 on the 2025 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list; Alejandro Chamorro of Nuema in Quito, ranked No. 10 on the 2025 Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list; Álvaro Clavijo of El Chato in Bogotá, ranked 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 recognized for striking geometric desserts crafted through 3D modeling.
“If I were able to, I would shoot 100 episodes per year,” Gelb says, noting that the fundamental selection criteria remain unchanged: “a chef who cooks with passion and purpose and tells a story with their cuisine.”
In Las Vegas, Friday’s sold-out, $1,000-a-ticket Icons Dinner at The Buffet marked the 80th anniversary of El Rancho introducing the very first Las Vegas 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, provided a direct anchor to the television series. Suntaranon opened the seventh season of Chef’s Table in 2024. They were joined by an elite roster including 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, recognized as a New York Times Best Restaurant in America.
Mason Royal, the chef behind Phil Rosenthal and Silverton’s Max & Helen’s—one of Los Angeles’s most talked-about new restaurants, where wait times can stretch up to four hours—brought his famously coveted pancakes to Sunday’s Grand Revelry Brunch at Mizumi, mercifully served without the standard multi-hour wait.
The program’s alumni network played a more formalized role in welcoming new members to this elite circle of culinary talent during the inaugural Chef’s Table Honors ceremony in Las Vegas. 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, alongside Bottura, Keller, and Silverton. During the ceremony, Silverton honored Keith Corbin, the James Beard Award-nominated chef-owner of Alta Adams in Los Angeles.
Organizers confirmed that the Chef’s Table Festival will return to Park City in the summer of 2027, while Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table is scheduled to return to Las Vegas next year. Connor indicated that additional host cities could be officially announced in the coming months, even as the United Airlines and Airbnb collaborations continue to scale. Meanwhile, Gelb’s production team still has unreleased video footage, podcast recordings, and panel conversations from the Park City events waiting to be rolled out.
“Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?” Gelb asks. “We’ll continue to experiment with that.”