“The original idea was about understanding who people are, where they come from, to understand the food at their table,” award-winning Chef Kristen Kish said of her new National Geographic series Restaurants at the End of the World, which premieres Tuesday, March 21st, at 10/9c on Nat Geo before its Disney+ streaming debut on March 22nd. The Top Chef winner was at the TCA Winter Press Tour to promote her new series and reveal how it all came about. “That idea became taking it ten times further, saying, ‘Let's explore the world, and let's see different environments and different cultures and different people in different corners of this planet,’ because Nat Geo does their magic with it. So I benefited greatly from National Geographic being the partner in this.”
(National Geographic for Disney/Autumn Sonnichsen)
While food has always been Kristen’s first love, her own journey to discover her self-identity is what sparked the idea for the series, which finds her traveling to four remote areas to learn about the people who live there and how they use their local resources to serve incredible dishes at their restaurants. “Being a Korean adoptee, raised in a white home, I had no reference of what it looked like to be me,” Kristen Kish revealed. “What that does to your psyche almost is that it places you in so many different places. And so, for me, I kept thinking, well, I could have ended up anywhere in this world with any family, doing any kind of thing and any lifestyle. So that idea drives a curiosity in me. And later on in life, yes, of course, I found my passion and skill of food. And to so closely relate those two things together, this human level and then this chef level, they're very much intertwined, because in order to know somebody and their food, you have to know who they are, where they came from, and how they got to where they are. That has nothing to do with food. And I think that that's the power of food and its connectability to bring us all together. So it really stemmed from that. Anytime I travel, I'm very fortunate to go and cook all over the world. I can take any skill anywhere on the road. So it was that, amped up times ten, as soon as Nat Geo got ahold of it and brought us to the end of the world. I can say that I've been close to the North Pole, to a restaurant, to go exploring and diving in the Arctic, and cooking with this amazing chef. I've never done that before. So Nat Geo really took me to the ends of the Earth to explore people and food.”
As experiences as Kristen Kish is as both a traveler and a chef, Restaurants at the End of the World gave her the chance to try new things. “You can imagine that cooking in places with not a lot of equipment or access to ingredients can be very challenging. I remember Rolando in Panama, he had no oven. And we are also working out of his home kitchen. So, it's very, very modest. And there's not a lot of stuff. But for me, I think, even more challenging than that, is what I realized with all four of our chefs is that they all relinquished control, and they said, ‘You know what? What will be, will be.’ And in my cooking world, I control as much as I can in order to provide the best outcome for the guests. So having to give up control was an emotional challenge that I had to let go of as a chef. But on a personal level, it has taught me a great deal and actually has opened up a lot more possibilities for me in my life.”
Of the four stops in the premiere season, Kristen Kish visits Boquete, Panama; Svalbard, Norway; and Paraty, Brazil. So you can imagine that nobody was more surprised than Kristen to find the show’s one domestic location to be among the most unusual. “It's North Haven Island off the coast of Maine, about twelve miles out to sea from Rockland. And for somebody, it is the end of the world. For me, it was very much home. But when I got on that boat and I went from mainland Maine just simply out to the island on an hour-and-a-half ferry ride, things started to change. I think it's just that idea of you are far removed from, when we talk about restaurants, your supply chain and how you can get things. What do you have to do? You have to grow everything there, because if you don't, it's going to take five days to try to organize produce from the mainland during the winter to try to track product. And by the time it gets to you, it's likely going to be frozen. So all these different things start to go through your mind. I live in New England, and that is so close to home. And to recognize and be surprised that that exists just a short drive from my house, even, is always really surprising to know that those places exist too.”
Every turn is a surprise in Restaurants at the End of the World, premiering Tuesday, March 21st, at 10/9c on Nat Geo. All four episodes will be available to stream on Disney+ beginning Wednesday, March 22nd.