Netflix launched the documentary series Chef’s Table in 2015. Eleven years later, it’s stepping off the screen for real: from August 13 to 16, Park City, Utah, hosts the first-ever Chef’s Table Festival. On the bill, more than 70 chefs from around the world and about thirty local restaurants, spread across more than a hundred events over four days.
The lineup is dizzying. Massimo Bottura (Modena), Francis Mallmann (Patagonia), Sean Brock (Tennessee), Dario Cecchini and Franco Pepe (Italy), Norbert Niederkofler (the Dolomites), Peruvians Virgilio Martínez and Pía León, and Brazilian Manu Buffara have all appeared on Netflix’s cameras, and all of them are showing up for this first edition, organized with reservation app Resy and American Express.
The program mixes collaborative dinners, open-fire cooking outdoors, masterclasses, and conversations with the public. The idea: pull chefs out of their closed kitchens and put them in front of diners, without a screen in between. Opening night belongs to Francis Mallmann, known for grilling over open coals; the second night brings together a new generation of cooks equally obsessed with fire.
Whether the chemistry of a series filmed in tight, controlled settings survives the jump to a public festival, where dozens of guests now share tables with Bottura or Martínez, remains to be seen. Park City, a Utah ski town better known as the home of the Sundance Film Festival, is trying the same trick with food.