Turning Viewers into Diners
Gelb considers live experiences the centerpiece of the expansion. Chef’s Table first tested the idea during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2024, transforming a South Beach venue into a retro diner where Evan Funke, Kwame Onwuachi, Nancy Silverton, and Michael Rafidi reworked familiar diner food.
That prototype grew into the inaugural Chef’s Table Festival, which brought 70 visiting chefs to Park City in August for four days of meals, classes, excursions, and collaborations. “We wanted it to be quite different from a normal food festival,” says Gelb. Instead of funneling crowds through tasting tents, the team organized restaurant takeovers and themed events, including a gathering of pizza makers from the United States and Italy, a tribute to Mexico, and open-fire dinners led by Francis Mallmann and Sean Brock.
“People who love the show, or people who just love to eat, can come to one place and have meals from many of the best chefs in the world,” Gelb says.
Chef’s Table most recently brought its festival approach to Wynn Las Vegas for Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table, which ran September 18 to 20 as part of a multiyear partnership. The team curated the roster and worked with the participants to shape the meals and events.
Airbnb translates that approach to smaller gatherings. “The Airbnb experiences are where we were able to kind of curate dining experiences [and] educational experiences,” Gelb says. More than 70 are offered around the world, connecting travelers with the people, places, and techniques represented by the series.
One of the more unlikely extensions brings Chef’s Table into a less hospitable dining room: an airplane cabin. “Airline food is always a terrifying proposition,” Gelb says. Rather than ask one chef to create a meal for the entire United Airlines network, the team enlisted 11 chefs connected to individual hubs. Their dishes are served on select Polaris flights departing from those hubs, with new menus rotating seasonally into 2027.
Polaris passengers can preorder the meals beginning five days before departure. Short films about the people behind the menus, a longer feature about the collaboration, and episodes of Chef’s Table: Talks are also available through United’s entertainment system. “A nice way to pass the time on an airplane is to actually be able to watch the story of the chef’s food that you’re eating,” Gelb says.
A broader partnership with American Express and Resy encompasses the Park City festival as well as additional dining and media projects. The companies also collaborated with Chef’s Table on On Set with Chef’s Table, a three-city dinner series built around live podcast recordings. Gelb interviewed Nick Curtola at i Cavallini in Brooklyn, Hannah Ziskin and Aaron Lindell at Quarter Sheets in Los Angeles, and Brandon Jew at Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco before guests sat down to dinner.
Other formats include Chef’s Table Chats, group conversations revealing what Gelb calls “a little bit of a lighter side of Chef’s Table,” and Chef’s Table Plates, which focuses on a single dish and its creator. For Plates, the team applies the visual treatment Gelb calls “the food beauty” or “the food symphony.”
Chef’s Table’s first book, The American Table, was curated with Jamila Robinson, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit and Epicurious, as the official cookbook of America’s 250th anniversary. Featuring recipes from more than 85 chefs, it presents American cooking as a product of migration, memory, and reinvention. The book is available for preorder and is scheduled to ship October 15, with Gelb anticipating more cookbooks to follow.
How Far Can Chef’s Table Expand?
Gelb sees few limits on where Chef’s Table could go next. “I think that anything is really possible,” he says. What matters is the partner. “We’re open to working with anyone that kind of shares that vision, and we also are very selective about the partners that we’re working with.”
He traces that standard back to Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the 2011 documentary that established his approach to culinary filmmaking. “My goal was to present the story of a chef with the same kind of cinematic care that the chef presents their food,” he says. “We want to apply that in every partnership and collaboration that we do.”
Those relationships continue beyond filming through podcasts, festivals, menus, and other collaborations. “The chefs are so important to us,” Gelb says. “They make it happen. They make it possible.”
