The idea that you might one day decide to chuck your responsibilities and ditch everything for a life at sea has periodically captured the imagination of every bored office drone staring out his window since Herman Melville. These days you don’t have to kill whales, but the possibility still exists. Even if you’d never actually do it, it’s nice to know that you could.
Like most non-traditional professions in 2016, yacht work even has its own reality show: Bravo’s Below Deck, and its new spinoff, Below Deck Mediterranean (the original is set in the Caribbean, the new one is set in Greece). Sure, luxury yachts aren’t exactly the merchant marines, but it is an interesting bargain: you get to experience the life of an absurdly rich oligarch during his most lavish vacation, but only as his glorified galley slave. All it seems to require, judging by the show, is an open mind and a hot bod (note: oligarchs do not hire ugly galley slaves).
It’s a much more balanced proposition for the ship’s chef. If your choices are cooking in a fine-dining restaurant doing 300 covers a night and cooking in a luxury yacht in Greece where the menu is whatever you want, the yacht option starts to look pretty good. The one caveat being that rich people are the very worst restaurant customers — imagine how much more awful and entitled they’d be on a yacht they’d chartered.
Below Deck Mediterranean‘s head chef is Ben Robinson, who, following a boarding school education in Oxford and an apprenticeship with the three Michelin star Duck Fat in the UK, has been a yacht chef for 10 years. I wanted to ask him all about the lifetime’s worth of assholes he must’ve dealt with in that time, as well as far more vomit-based questions than is usual, or even advisable when I interview chefs. Enjoy.
UPROXX: How far in advance do you have to prep when you’re cooking aboard a yacht? How far do they go out? What’s the longest trip you’ve had to supply for?
I once actually provisioned a boat for six weeks without going to a store. It was a 300-foot sailboat with 28 crew, and that was actually quite a feat to be honest. I don’t think you can really go more then six weeks. That’s about the maximum unless you start jarring and freezing vegetables and that.
What are the particular challenges of cooking aboard a ship? Do you have to tie stuff down? Did you learn anything the hard way?
Yes, I mean, lessons are best learned the hard way and yes it’s been a huge learning curve for me. The provisioning aspect is always very scary because sometimes land is nowhere near in sight or you’re going to an island where it’s impossible to find anything other then maybe a can of sweet corn. It’s very daunting. You can’t really do anything last minute. You have to be very, very prepared. Clearly the movement of the boat is another issue and just following protocol on a yacht is another thing a chef is going to have to get used to.
On the topic of movement, do people ever confuse basic seasickness for food poisoning?
You know, let me tell you, there’s a way of sussing that one out. Generally if I was to give someone food poisoning it would include the whole group.
Right.
So if it’s just one individual, then it would definitely be seasickness, but they’re completely different, I mean food poisoning is lots of throwing up, obviously discharging from various extremities of your body, but it’s also fever. Whereas seasickness, it’s a complete discombobulation of your orientation in your head and also vomiting. So they are very different.
Well, other than the vomiting. Did you have to deal with a lot of seasickness at the beginning? Was there a curve there for you?
Yeah, there was. Yeah in the beginning it was… You know I’ve always suffered from motion sickness. There have been times where it’s just been absolutely awful, where I’ve been literally flipping steaks on the grill and vomiting over the side at the same time. It was really, really nasty. But then I started getting on bigger and bigger boats and obviously the bigger the boat the less movement [remember that, ladies -Ed], but yeah I haven’t been properly seasick for years. I do think I’ve conditioned myself.
Have you had any memorable cooking failures, either aboard ship or otherwise and any lessons that you learned from them?
Yes well, actually on my first boat I was in the Bahamas and I was cooking spiny lobster tail, which is far denser then the New England lobster that I’m actually used to, having summered in Cape Cod. And so they came out drastically undercooked and I remember just being so embarrassed and not really feeling worthy of my chef jacket’s. But it was forgivable, and since then, I serve lobster, spiny lobster tail tartar, so in hindsight, [uncooked lobster] really wasn’t that bad. But if you’re going to cook it, cook it, you know.
I’ve heard that airplane pilots don’t eat the same meal on long flights in case one of them gets food poisoning. Are there any rules like that for yacht captains?
I mean, I do know about that as well. No, there is no rule. The thing is, my style of cooking is going to be a lot safer then airline food, which is sort of, we’ll call it “hot hell.” And that’s basically, that can be an absolute breeding grounds for bacteria, whereas mine is done in a very clean, orderly, timely fashion and it definitely alleviates the risk of food poisoning.
Right. What are your favorite and the least favorite types of people to cook for?
Well, my favorite person to cook for is someone who says, “Ben, you have absolute creative say, we trust you, do whatever you want.” That is very, very liberating for a chef. Clearly, you also get the polar opposite who is extremely fussy, lactose intolerant, gluten intolerant, vegetarian, vegan, no fat, no sugar… exclamation mark.
Do you just roll with the punches?
Yeah I mean you have to. It definitely is a challenge. To be honest some of my most creative weeks of charter have been Pritikin, which is basically all of the things I just mentioned and not being able to eat them, so you really do push yourself. And honestly, if you can do it, the client is fantastic and it really proves your worth as a chef and will reflect in the tip.
Are there any ingredients that people always request that you’re tired of cooking?
Not really, to be honest.
Okay.
I mean steak yes but, I mean everyone wants a steak, really, don’t they? No, I’m not bored with any of them, because I always try to push myself. I seldom repeat myself. I don’t actually think I’ve ever repeated myself, so it’s not necessarily about the ingredients, it’s the form in which you take.
Is that part of what’s exciting about cooking aboard a ship? You don’t have to maintain the same menu like you would in a restaurant?
It is. It’s a scary realm also because you’re doing something for the first time and you’ve got to be pretty damn good and confident to know that this creation is going to be good. Yes I do think that the seasonal menus from a restaurant would bore me, but at the same time you’re also giving yourself a really good opportunity to hone in on perhaps perfection, in a dish, and I’ve never really been given that opportunity. My dishes I feel are sort of 90% there, but if they were part of a restaurant menu I’d be slowly tweaking it and really building it up to a very high standard.
Can you tell me about the first restaurant you worked at?
I worked at the Bibendum in London. We had a Michelin star. I think we were… We were one of two in London at the time with Michelin stars, which is the highest rating. Yeah it was old school London kitchen you know. Don’t be surprised if you get punched in the stomach if you ever cook something shit, or even a frying pan comes flying at your head. Nowadays it’s so politically correct. There’s a lot of harassment waivers and charges floating around. It’s a different school, but I enjoyed that. I kind of liked the aggression a little bit and I’ve decided to go a different route with my mentality and try and be liberal and politically correct. I work with a lot of girls and they’re quite sensitive so you’ve got to be careful.
You mean you can’t just go in with the sailor mentality even though you’re aboard ship?
Yeah I can’t just deck the chief stew because she didn’t deliver the plates on time.
Noted. What do you think is the hardest part of a chef’s job that most people don’t think about?
I mean honestly it’s all … It is a really hard position. I think people are completely unconscious to how difficult it is. I’m in charge of all the of food on board. I have to feed 12 guests, 12 crew, all at different times. I’m in charge of provisioning. I’m in charge of health and safety. I’m in charge of budgeting. I’m in charge of menu planning, and I’m in charge of the galley cleanliness. I mean, it’s just a huge job and I quite often I feel like the captain will be… I think he finds the comfort zone which is just ignoring how big a job it is.
Is there a big difference between the kind of staff that you work with on a ship and the kind that you work with on land?
Yeah, I guess to a certain extent the crew aboard a yacht would be more boat-orientated [are you guys writing this down? -Ed]. Yeah it’s a different animal for sure. Boat crew versus restaurant crew. Completely different. I think on a yacht since we’re all living and working in such close quarters, we have to be able to toe that line and get on with everyone and we don’t get to go home at night you know. I feel like it’s tougher socially.
Do you have a first food memory?
I think one of the most exciting food memories I have was eating paella in Majorca with my family at the age of four years old. I think at that point it was pretty obvious that I may become a chef as I walloped the mussels and clams and scallops off the plate. I think people were sort of quite astonished at how advanced a four year old’s palate could actually be.
Do you think that affects what you make today?
I’m always trying to push the bar. I’m always trying to be adventurous. I want my clients to experience new exciting flavors and things. I do believe that is a major part of my job criteria.
When you’re in a restaurant yourself are there any foods that you tend to avoid?
I mean, we’ve all read “Kitchen Confidential,” right?
Yeah.
I mean there were some very valid points. Don’t eat fish on the weekends. Avoid the Hollandaise sauce because it’s in the danger zone, and all of that, but no I really try to not think about it. I mean oysters are a bit scary for me, so I like to make sure that the waters are very cold. Where they’re from. For instance, I live in Ft. Lauderdale but I’ve never actually eaten a Florida oyster, so yeah that would be one.
Name something that most people cook wrong.
Oh, interesting. I think everything really.
Haha, any specifics?
No, literally everything.
So what do you do back on land?
I live in Ft. Lauderdale and I run a catering company but I’m available to travel, and I also am an integrative nutritionist. A holistic nutritionist, dietitian, and I have a phone-based practice. People can always reach me at ChefBenRobinson.com.
And what exactly does being an integrative nutritionist entail?
I help people reach their health goals. I diagnose their diet, I diagnose their issues. I reformulate their diet, and I’ve had tremendous luck with remission diets. I’ve worked with diabetes. I’ve worked with cancer diets, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and I’ve had amazing success with weight loss, particularly female weight loss.
Below Deck Mediterranean airs Tuesdays on Bravo.
Vince Mancini is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.
