Chef Ben is back! And while chief stew Hannah Ferrier might find reasons to roll her eyes at Ben Robinson’s return to Below Deck Mediterranean, the guests are rolling theirs in pure delight at the food, and really, isn’t that all that matters?

Decider caught up with Ben at the Bravo offices in New York City to hear about how he got that nasty burn blister on his finger, why he wishes he was on board for two more charters this season, and the pit stop he took after he left the boat to visit Emily in London (aw!).

Decider: How has the whole process felt for you this time?

Chef Ben: The whole vibe, it’s a little different this time. I’ve been out of Below Deck for a couple of years and so I have a little bit more distance from it. I’m also very busy with my catering company, it’s more of an exclusive event company, so I’ve been doing a lot of that over the past few years. It’s nice because I feel like when I first got into Below Deck it was like, that was the big thing that I had going for me, and now it’s nice because it’s more in the background. When you first start off on TV, it’s amazing, like ‘Oh my God, that’s me on that bloody TV over there!’ But now it’s just like, ‘Yeah, it’s just part of it, isn’t it?’ I take it in my stride.

‘Oh yeah, that job that I did for a few weeks.’

Yeah, exactly. It’s just not a big deal anymore. I’ve done six seasons now, and it’s nice. I keep saying this, and my mum gets so annoyed when I say it, but I just feel like I’m getting a little older now and I’m a little more mature, and I guess a mother hates for her son to say that.

I mean, you could be getting older but less mature, so it could be the other way.

I’m 38 now. I’m approaching my 40s. But I don’t think Below Deck is very good for mature people. I think honestly it would be tough for me to do a whole season. What people don’t realize with the chef position is we’re working like twenty hours a day and we’re not taking breaks, so I think it’s slightly unfair to drag him out to a nightclub until four in the morning the one night he might be able to just rest. I think it’s unfair to do that with someone who’s basically 40 years old. [Laughs]

But who would have loaded Travis into the car? They needed you there!

Well, then you just call me up and I’ll get out of bed!

If they were to call you in the future and say, ‘We’d love to have you back. Great news: the boat is Sirocco,’ is that an immediate no for you now?

No, I mean, it’s such an opportunity to go back to a Below Deck. And obviously it’s wonderful if it’s a short season and you’re rescuing it. I think I would go back, yeah.

If the stove worked?

I’d bring my own stove. I think that it was just a perfect amount of time for me. In fact, I think I had a couple more [charters] in me. I did three, I think five would have been great. I recommended that we should rotate the chef position. To be honest, it’s not unusual, a lot of chefs do one on, one off, or two on, two off. Because it’s crazy. I don’t know how they feel about that, but I think that would be an option that I would go for. But six weeks, it’s a lot, it’s tough, both mentally and physically.

Do you think Anastasia was judged more harshly than necessary because of what she had to work with, due to the busted stove and those circumstances?

I mean, obviously I vocalized that the stove top was broken. But ultimately, Anastasia pulled the pin on her own operation, and I think she probably did it with good cause. If it had just been the stove top I think Sandy would have got it fixed. I think there was a lot of other stuff going on, and just the pure anxiety of it would have really summoned that decision to pull the pin and be like, ‘Wow this is too much.’

I enjoyed seeing that you had dinner with Kate Chastain last night. Are you guys better friends on land?

Oh yeah. We’ve always been great friends on land. The problem with our relationship when we work on the boat is I don’t think Kate understands that I’m always looking for knowledge. I want to know what’s going on with the guests, I want to know where they are, I want to know if they’re hungry, I want to know if they’re liking the dinner. Because we are just trapped in this little hole. I’m that type of guy that wants to really know and feel things out. Kate, she’s really good at her job and I think she probably does interact with the guests, but not really as much on the chef’s behalf. But you know, that’s a unicorn. I think that I’ve only met one girl ever [who did], and it was on a massive 300-foot plus, and she was a purser. That was really her job, to liaise, and she wasn’t really service or housekeeping or anything like that.

How about Hannah, what’s your relationship like with her?

The funny thing about Hannah is that I just feel like she was just so reluctant to do her job, you know? And everything I did seemed to annoy her. I think she needs to realize that we’re all on the boat for the guests’ experience, and that’s just the bottom line. If I need assistance in getting there, then she should offer that. Because it’s not a competition as to who can do the least, it’s a competition to see who can do the most. And if everyone works as a team, that’s going to facilitate that mission, and therefore the guest experience will be better.

I was surprised to see the reluctance to the silver domes to keep the food warm.

I mean, it was incredible to watch. And the girls, they’re guaranteed eight hours sleep, they were guaranteed at least a two-hour break in the afternoon. I feel like her priority was nurturing her little daycare center, which would have been her and “her girls” and I just think that should not really be a priority in yachting. The priority is doing the absolute utmost most for the guests’ experience, and that has got nothing to do with taking naps. I mean, you can’t say, ‘I’m gonna take a nap because it’s going to make the guests’ experience better.’ You’d have to be really bloody clever to be able to convince me of that one.

Tell me about the burn on your hand, does that happen a lot?

No, it’s just that the galley was a bloody nightmare. I didn’t have much counter space. I was probably using the stove top as a work surface, or just to hold prep, because induction runs on electromagnetism, so if you put a stainless steel bowl on the stove top it could activate on high. And so you’re not expecting to take that bowl off and for it to be red-hot, so it got me, it bit me. That was probably the biggest workspace that I had, and I was kind of sharing the island with the girls, and it’s just really tough. It’s just not a natural workspace for such a cumbersome load.

When you got off the boat did you take a vacation after to chill out? Or did you just want to get right back into your own work?

I made a pit-stop in London, and I saw Emily for a couple of days which was really nice. We stayed in a lovely hotel on the water, on the Thames, and then I had to fly back for a big event. We kept it moving, but it was good. For lack of a better phrase, I just thought, she’s gonna have my balls if I fly over London without seeing her. She had come to Florida so many times, and I just thought, there’s no excuse at this point. I’m a lucky guy.

What did you think about Aesha’s sense of humor?

If I hear that voice one more time, I am going to take a drill and I’m going to drill out my eardrums [Laughs}.

Tonight’s episode dealt a lot with Travis’s drinking and Sandy has a little chat with him. Was it a nuisance for you, were you worried?

No, to be honest, I just feel a bit bad for him. We all drink too much on these boats, but that’s extreme. It’s sad to see someone getting absolutely delirious. It’s tough. I think we’ve all been drunk or very drunk, but I would hope that I’m never like that. No one ever had to help me walk. I’m the type of guy where if I get drunk, I just go fuckin’ batshit crazy, I’ll be on top of the bar taking my clothes off and throwing champagne at everyone. I don’t get to that point where I’m just completely dead-weight.

Poor guy. I mean, I think a lot of it is to do with his culture, both Australian, I think they drink a lot, the English do too, but I think the Aussies really do. And he is from a sailboat culture, where they’re kind of more vagrant drinkers. A lot of them don’t even have showers on those boats and stuff. I don’t think you have to behave accordingly, I don’t think much is expected of you.

Anything else that you’re excited for people to see this season?

Yeah, at some point in the season it clicked. For my last charter, [after] dinner with some of my crewmates, I came back and I spent a long time, [until] like three or four in the morning, just cleaning the galley and throwing everything out that I wasn’t going to use, because less is more and because your head’s clearer. I really got to grips with the space and I suddenly had a handle on it, whereas before it was just a mess, both in my mind and in actuality. So I can look forward to hopefully better food, more thoughtful, more organized, and the end product, which is the food and the presentation. I feel like it was a tough challenge and I look forward to hopefully me succeeding.

You Marie Kondo-ed it!

Yeah, I did. I got rid of all the cobwebs. When you have a situation where you’ve had two chefs and neither one of them had ever really found their footing, it was really important for me to do that. Even though I compromised a night’s sleep, it was good. I felt good about it. In the end, I was quite proud.

Below Deck Mediterranean airs Monday at 9pm ET/PT on Bravo.

Where to stream Below Deck Mediterranean