Where to Stream: The Chef Show

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Since it debuted last year, Netflix’s The Chef Show has been a laid back look at Hollywood hit maker Jon Favreau‘s obsession with all things food. The series follows Favreau and BFF/celebrity chef Roy Choi as they road trip around America, squeezing in meals with famous friends, culinary superstars, and superheroes from the MCU. In fact, The Chef Show first made headlines when the show’s very first guest star, Gwyneth Paltrow, let it slip that she didn’t remember being in Spider-Man: Homecoming with Favreau.

Indeed, Favreau has enlisted a number of collaborators from the MCU, The Mandalorian, and even The Lion King onto The Chef Show, and The Chef Show Season 3 is no exception. The latest season of the series hits Netflix on February 19, and news broke last night that its sole Hollywood heavyweight, Sam Raimi, might be the latest director to join the MCU. Raimi is reportedly in talks to take over Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for original director Scott Derrickson. It’s a twist that no comic book movie saw coming, unless, that is, maybe you’re Disney whisperer Jon Favreau.

The fact is careful watchers of The Chef Show will notice that the Hollywood guest stars are almost always pulled from Favreau’s Disney projects. It’s a coincidence that leads us to wonder…is Netflix paying the bill for Favreau’s Disney power lunches?

Let’s look at all the Hollywood adjacent guests that Favreau has invited on and what we knew about their involvement in potential Disney projects (at the time of their appearance):

Season 1, Episode 1: Gwyneth Paltrow is reminded that she was, in fact, in a Spider-Man movie with Jon Favreau.

Season 1, Episode 2: Bill Burr shows up and it’s later revealed in late 2019 that he has a guest role in Favreau’s The Mandalorian.

Season 1, Episode 2: During the Avengers: Endgame shoot in Atlanta, Favreau and Choi shoot a meal with Robert Downey, Jr., Tom Holland, directors the Russo Brothers, and the head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige.

Season 1, Episode 3: Chef and Marvel star Scarlett Johansson does not appear, but her favorite pasta does.

Season 1, Episode 5: Robert Rodriguez is featured. He is the outlier as there is no apparent Disney connection — yet.

Season 2, Episode 1: The Lion King voice actor Seth Rogen guest stars.

Season 2, Episode 5: Favreau and Choi work on dishes with Star Wars guru Dave Filoni at Skywalker Ranch; it’s mentioned they are working on The Mandalorian.

Season 3, Episode 2: Sam Raimi comes over to make sourdough bread and pizza…and in the weeks ahead of the episode’s premiere, it’s announced that Raimi is likely joining Marvel’s stable of directors.

Now this is absolute conjecture, but almost all of the celebrities that Favreau shepherds onto his supercool Netflix series to eat and cook with a famous celebrity chef are Disney-related. Either he’s worked with them on past Disney projects, is filming the segments during downtime in production, or — in the case of Raimi — possibly hinting at a Disney deal to come.

On the one hand, this could just be because Favreau is involved with so many Disney projects, and so it’s natural that the people he has time to hang out with are related to his work. On the other hand, business does casually pop up in these conversations. Whether it’s reminiscing with Paltrow about Spider-Man: Homecoming, getting Kevin Feige and Tom Holland to reveal the insane behind-the-scenes timeline leading to his casting, or even Filoni and Favreau seemingly working on a break on Mandalorian work…the Disney deals are always bubbling to the surface.

While this is all speculative, the fact that Favreau invited Raimi onto the show in the first place seemed like a big deal as the once celebrated genre auteur has been in “Director’s Jail” for almost a decade. During the episode, Favreau teases him about his time promoting his own Spider-Man films and gives Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 a shoutout. He sounds like a friend giving another friend some shine. And if we’re wondering how Kevin Feige would even think about Sam Raimi for the Doctor Strange 2 job…well, they obviously have Jon Favreau in common.

Even if The Chef Show is just a fun little passion project for Favreau, it still offers Hollywood watchers a fascinating glimpse into the behind-the-scenes relationships propelling some of Disney’s biggest projects.

The Chef Show Season 3 premieres on Netflix on February 19.

Watch The Chef Show on Netflix