Reality TV’s newest villain insists he’s “not a celebrity,” but he’s already making a name for himself in the series premiere of Yes, Chef! Or, rather, reintroducing himself to the world in Yes, Chef!
Katsuji Tanabe is among 12 talented chefs competing before culinary legends Martha Stewart and José Andrés — and all are vying for a life-changing cash prize in the new series. But, as seen in the Season 1 premiere, Chef Katsuji proved the biggest obstacle he’ll have to overcome is his arrogance and what his business partner called his “Cirque du Soleil of drama.”
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Audiences are especially up in arms over how the episode’s Team Captain used lies and “sarcasm” to send one chef packing.
“Clearly, I am the one to beat in this competition,” he brazenly told the show’s iconic hosts.
Here’s what to know about the chef who will stop at nothing to win.
Katsuji Tanabe’s Early Life and Career
Chef Katsuji was born to a Japanese father and a Mexican mother, having been raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Mexico City, according to a 2023 blog post he wrote on Kalamata’s Kitchen.
As a child, Chef Katsuji helped his grandmother in the kitchen, “impressed” by “transformation by fire, water, and salt” and how it became pasta.
“She’d let me play with the pasta while she cooked, letting me break it up and smash it around, and she obviously wouldn’t serve that pasta that I played with,” Chef Katsuji stated on the blog. “She served her pasta, but I always thought that I had cooked it. I loved that.”
At 19, Chef Katsuji moved to Los Angeles without knowing a lick of English. After a sudden severance of funds, as he explained to PBS in 2005, he had less than $5 to his name and only the clothes on his back. Thankfully, support from the women in his life helped him risk it all to attend culinary school — he graduated from California’s Le Cordon Bleu, according to a profile by Chicago Gourmet.
Chef Katsuji worked at L.A.’s Bastide Restaurant and Maestro’s Steakhouse and was later taken in at Shiloh’s Kosher Steakhouse, per a 2016 interview with NBC News. In 2010, he opened the beloved Mexikosher in Beverly Hills, which had a successful eight-year run thanks to its kosher tacos.
Chef Katsuji has since expanded his food enterprise in several major cities, including another Mexikosher location in Manhattan, New York, and other non-kosher eateries, per his website. He is the proud owner of 13 restaurants across the United States, per his Yes, Chef! profile.
He lives with his wife and children in Raleigh, North Carolina, which he now calls home.
Katsuji Tanabe on Top Chef and more TV appearances
Chef Katsuji competed in Season 12 and 14 of Bravo’s Top Chef, once admitting he became addicted to the “rush” of reality television, according to his Bravo profile. In addition to Top Chef Boston and Top Chef Charleston, he has also appeared in the premiere season of Top Chef Mexico and Top Chef Junior, per NBC Insider.
And if the Bravo shows weren’t enough, more of Chef Katsuji’s cooking credits include participation in Food Network’s Bobby’s Triple Threat, Chopped, Beat Bobby Flay, and PBS’s Cooking Under Fire.
Onscreen, Chef Katsuji holds nothing back, though his abrasive personality tends to rub some the wrong way.
“Cooking is the only thing I take seriously in life,” he stated on his website. “I’m very sarcastic, not serious, except when it comes to my food. Cooking is make-it or break-it.”
But, as seen in the Yes, Chef! premiere, one man’s “sarcasm” is another’s bald-faced lie, and even Chef Katsuji knew the lines were blurred.
“It’s a way to protect myself,” he said in his confessional during the premiere episode.
All About Katsuji Tanabe’s Wife and Children
Chef Katsuji is married with two young daughters, and while he keeps his public profile mainly focused on cooking, he stated in Kalamata’s Kitchen that he often gives cooking classes to children. Despite some kids’ lack of interest in cooking kosher, he teaches that perceived dietary restrictions “can actually make you a more creative chef.”
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He also explained that his own children are “spoiled” in terms of eating because Chef Katsuji and his wife love good food. He lets them help in small doses, such as when peeling potatoes or stirring a dish, because they’re often eager to move on to the next task quickly.
Just as Chef Katsuji’s grandmother did for him, “We make them feel like we’re putting food on the table because of them.”
The chef-turned-TV personality has mentored at the Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles and visited Mexico to speak to aspiring chefs with low-income backgrounds. According to NBC News, Chef Katsuji loves the values of Jewish people, though he does not identify as Jewish.
Katsuji Tanabe on Yes, Chef!
Chef Katsuji might do great works within his community, but he’s not the easiest to get along with onscreen, such as when he failed to lead his team to victory in Yes, Chef! Season 1, Episode 1.
“I really don’t care what they’re thinking; this isn’t a democracy,” he told producers. “This has to be a dictatorship.”
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During a sizzling showdown between Chef Katsuji and Chef Michelle Francis, Chef Katsuji was the first to grab the steak, purposefully withholding it — and never using it — to keep Chef Michelle from having an advantage. It was a move that even Martha Stewart called “nasty.”
In the end, when it was time to send someone home, winner Chef Katsuji chose Chef Petrina Peart and falsely claimed it was Francis’s choice to send her home. His breaking a plate and yelling “Opa” after winning — a dig at Chef Michelle’s Greek-inspired advantage — didn’t help his cause.
It was one reason Torrece “Chef T” Gregoire called him a “master antagonist.”
See what else Chef Katsuji has up his chef’s sleeve as new episodes of Yes, Chef! continue Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. And don’t miss Martha and José’s controversial hot takes in the kitchen.
