‘Below Deck’: 5 of the Biggest Chef Meltdowns
Chef Tom Checketts from Below Deck Mediterranean seems to be losing his cool again in the galley. He’s seen snapping at Aesha Scott and argues with Captain Sandy Yawn later this season.
Girlfriend bosun Malia White previously joked with the crew that chefs come with a certain level of intensity, which has become pretty apparent on the series. Chef Ben Robinson became notorious for blowing his lid on a number of occassions. Other chefs like chef Leon Walker and chef Kevin Dobson had no qualms about telling chief stew Kate Chastain they simply didn’t like her.
And while chef meltdowns and drama seem to be one element of the show, what were some of the most dramatic Below Deck chef moments?
Chef Adam put onions in the guest’s food
Chef Adam Glick from Below Deck Mediterranean season 2 purposely added onions to a guest’s food after the guest requested no onions. Glick was smarting over a torn love affair with White at the time. He was grumpy and frustrated and the guest’s request didn’t help matters.
Glick initially insisted that food doesn’t taste as good without onions. So he kept sneaking them in even though the guest could tell onions were in his food and sent it back. Captain Sandy Yawn asked Glick if he purposely added onions, but he denied it.
Later Glick admitted to Yawn he added onions to the guest’s food. He told Yawn he simply thought it was funny to add in the onions when she asked him why. “Hannah [Ferrier] sees this as a moment to chuck me under the bus,” Glick said in a confessional. “Yeah, it was just that first night. [The guest] really put me off. I didn’t like the way he was talking,”
Chef Ben trashes the kitchen after a bad review
Chef Ben Robinson from Below Deck was in a no-win situation when guest Timothy Sykes complained to Captain Lee Rosbach about the food. Sykes’ girlfriend preferred cheese quesadillas and chicken fingers to five-star yacht cuisine. However, Sykes wasn’t overtly clear that she wouldn’t eat some of the more high-brow fare and later penalized the crew with the tip.
Robinson had a meltdown in the kitchen after Sykes departed the yacht. He threw pots and pans and yelled. Bosun Eddie Lucas came to calm him.
“Being in the Below Deck galley is a pressure cooker,” Robinson told Bravo. “The demands are outrageous, the hours are grueling, and the intensity is otherworldly. I snapped when Timothy Sykes blamed me for not catering to his precious girlfriend’s delicate demands when clearly I was just misinformed by him. Sadly, I misrepresented myself as a professional, but in reality, it was shared between myself and old friend Eddie. Actually I think there was a lunar eclipse that evening, is it forgivable?”
Later Robinson shared that he was supremely upset that the lack of communication impacted the tip. “When Timothy boarded the yacht, I threw out a bunch of shucked oysters, and he exclaimed, to his surprise, that everyone loved them!” he said. “I had no idea that he had excluded his girlfriend from this equation. Call me too literal!”
Chef Leon put honey in Kate Chastain’s bed
Chef Leon Walker from Below Deck told chief stew Kate Chastain he did not like her. And while he made snide comments about her during work he did something that could only be equated to a passive-aggressive meltdown.
“Fun fact: Leon poured an entire jar of honey in my bed while I was off the boat during season 3,” Chastain tweeted in March.
Chastain and Walker also warred on Twitter. Chastain tossed Walker shade and he threw it back to her. “Leon turns angry every time I let him know the guests’ requests. Meanwhile, I’m all ‘why are you yelling?'” Chastain tweeted.
Chef Ben versus the galley kitchen
Robinson swooped in to save the day on Below Deck Med Season 4. But he was met with a galley kitchen that had broken appliances and an awkward setup. Stove burners weren’t working and the food wasn’t hot when it got to the table.
He finally lost it in the kitchen when he burned himself on a pan. “I would love to bump into the guy who designed this galley,” he said ET recounts. “I would kick him right in the f**king face. It’s just so ugly and dysfunctional and messy and f**ked up.”
“I can’t f**king do this!” he added. “It’s enough to make me want to give up cooking for f**king good.”
Chef Kevin kicking sand in Kate Chastain’s face
Although it didn’t happen in the kitchen, chef Kevin Dobson from Below Deck definitely melted down on Kate Chastain during the final evening of the season. After weeks of tension, Dobson got supremely drunk and ended up kicking sand in Chastain’s face.
The two said each other was bad at their job. Chastain went to sit on a lounge chair but then Dobson turned around and kicked sand in Chastain’s direction. “A projectile of sand shoots into my eye. This was not an accident,” Chastain said, Bravo’s The Daily Dish recounts. “Kevin kicked sand in my eye, and he definitely did it on purpose.”
“You’ve got to understand that it’s all done now,” Dobson shared. “There’s no more guests to serve. There’s no more holding back.”
