- Welcome to Expert Mode
where real-world experts help us navigate
your favorite video games.
Today we're playing the cooperative cooking simulation game,
Overcooked.
(simple orchestral music)
And to help us overcome the challenges of a busy kitchen,
we are joined by cooking experts,
Michael and Bryan Voltaggio.
The Voltaggio brothers are chefs, restaurant owners,
and cookbook authors.
Bryan was a finalist on Top Chef and Top Chef Masters.
Michael was the winner of Top Chef season six.
- Thanks for being here today, guys.
- Thanks for having us.
- Are you guys gamers?
- There's a lot more buttons now than what there used to be,
so it might be a little bit more difficult.
- I'm not very good at it.
I do enjoy it.
- Alright, let's go, one-one.
- This is a recipe, right?
Three onions make a soup.
Is that a common recipe?
- Yeah, sure if you're making onion soup,
I guess, I don't know.
- The layout of this kitchen
is awful.
How do you lay out a kitchen for maximum efficiency
and what is wrong here?
- Well, I feel like running all the way down
to that side of the kitchen to get your cutting board
is not efficient.
- You shouldn't have to walk that far
in a professional kitchen.
Everything should be around you.
You know having your mise en place, everything in its place.
- Would you ever have two people in a kitchen only?
- No.
(laughter)
- You just got another order.
Your ticket rail is filling up.
- So where do I go?
Do I need to wash the dishes now, or no?
- No, don't worry about the dishes.
Let's throw two more onions in that pot there
because you got 'em chopped up already.
- Oh, gotcha.
- See, you're working together. - Yeah, working together.
- This is what helps, teamwork.
- Yeah.
- So, I'm guy with glasses, I'm going to the board?
- Sure!
Yeah, I'll start putting onions over here for you.
- OK, cool.
I'm on it.
Mise en place chef, everything in its place.
- This is great.
- Go all of your ingredients ready.
- Yes, thank you.
- We're close, I got the dirty plate.
- Awesome, that's great.
- Look at this, we're like a well-oiled machine.
That's how you get orders out.
- You guys watched us do it first.
- Watch this move, I dropped a dirty plate,
- Ooh, take it.
- I pick this up.
Look at that.
Now I come back to the dirty dishes.
- I've heard things like a chef
knowing how to make a good soup,
it seems like a very simple, pedestrian thing,
but is it something much more complicated?
- I mean when you're building a soup,
you're building layers of flavor,
and so in this particular case,
- Onion, onion and onion.
- This only has onions, so,
it is layers of onions, apparently.
- Now we drive the bus to here.
- I think it's a food truck.
- We drive a food truck to a restaurant.
Now tell me about the efficiency of that.
- Just in case everything goes wrong,
you have a food truck out back.
- So, here's an interesting situation,
have you ever worked in a restaurant
where there's pedestrians literally walking
in the middle of your restaurant?
- I feel like that's a hazard.
A lot of food events that we do are outside like this,
where's there's people walking around constantly.
- Like food festival-y kind of things?
- This is a food festival, Bryan.
- Oh, it is.
I see.
- Normally, this is where people are asking Bryan
if they can take a picture with him.
- Hey, get out of my way!
- Can you explain a little about the expediting process?
Beause that's something I see on cooking shows,
but I don't fully underdstand how it works.
- So when you're expediting,
- [Bryan] I need to put it on the fire.
- One person talks in the kitchen at a time.
- That is true.
- The chef talks.
IN this case, I'll play the chef.
I'm expediting,
I'm telling him where to take that food.
- Get up out of my way, lady.
- Soup's burning, can you go do that?
- Oh yes, got it.
- Where is the sink in this one?
- They don't listen to the chef, they don't.
- Why is the sink all the way
on the other side of the kitchen?
- Now, the game starts you off with soup.
Is there a dish that you started with,
that you have a soft spot for?
Like, something you grew attached to
when you were starting your cooking career?
Or something that like--
- I mean, soup is definitely one that you should start with
because it teaches you how to build layers of flavor.
I actually on New Year's Eve, once,
burned all the soup at like 5:45 and we opened at six.
- Oh, god!
- And it was potato soup.
And I actually took the mashed potatoes
that we were supposed to use,
and blended that into water
and served that as the potato soup
and it was actually really good.
- Whoa!
- I'm gonna pass it to you.
- Here, here, here.
I'm giving it to you, take it, chop it.
No, you gotta chop it, chef.
- Oh, chop, chop.
- On the cutting board there.
- Whoa! What's happening?
Why is the kitchen moving?
- You're failing, that's why.
- Now, how often does your kitchen move?
- We're in a boat.
Oh, I've done this before.
- Your soup is burning,
- A fire!
- The kitchen's almost on fire!
- Get the extinguisher!
- Give me the fire extinguisher!
- I'm trying, I can't reach it!
- You gotta go all the way around!
- Bryan, the whole kitchen's burning down!
- You can hand it to me!
(laughter)
- This is amazing!
- I'm over here dying, right now!
- I know, I'm trying to help you!
- I'm burning to death right now.
- How do I get this out?
- I'm trying.
- You are the worst brother, ever.
- This is insane!
Look, I saved you.
I saved you.
Who cares about the food?
- Look at all the orders that we have.
This is called being in the shit.
- When you're actually in the shit,
how do you get out?
Are there tactics for being able to
move through orders more quickly?
- You have to go ticket by ticket.
When you have like a bunch of tickets on the board,
it's better to just get one out,
then get another, then get another.
Instead of trying to cook bits and pieces
of all the other tickets.
So, Bryan, you could do that.
- So, stack me up some tomatoes, guy.
- I'm pretty sure we just went out of business.
- Oh we got negative two! - We got negative two!
- We did go out of business!
- Is there like a disaster in the kitchen that you remember?
That was someting that your stomach sinks when you realize,
oh crap, this happened?
- When I was 16, I was in charge of loading the Thanksgiving
turkeys into the slow cooker overnight.
There's two settings.
There's a Cook and a Hold.
And I set Hold, but I didn't set to Cook.
So, I put 'em in and basically these frozen turkeys,
it wasn't really a high-end place,
this is like my first job,
But, they slowly defrosted,
and then overnight, essentially, festered.
- Ugh!
- [Bryan] Let's move away from this nuclear power plant,
because I feel like that's kinda gross.
So let's go this way to the metropolis over here.
- That's important, though.
Location is one of the key elements,
- Ooh, this is over by the water, too.
- In opening a successful restaurant.
- Yeah, exactly.
Do you wanna go to the power plant to eat
or do you wanna come to this cool city?
- Have you ever worked in a restaurant
that was a good restaurant, but shitty location?
- Mmm-hmm.
- Where was, or you can't say?
- I can't say.
- Mmm-hmm.
- You can't say, mm-hmm.
Great.
- So, we're making soup!
- So, yeah, but here's the problem,
- I'm giving you tomatoes
and you're going to the cutting board, chef.
- Yeah, but here's the problem,
- Or do I have to bring them all the way over to you?
Come on.
- There's no room to move around here.
We're going to get into each other's way.
- Oh I see what's going on now.
- This is gonna be--
- This is gonna be super inefficient.
- Rough.
- You guys could just keep walking in a circle.
- Yes keep going.
- Aww, this is cute.
- Round and round we go.
Oh no, that's a tomato.
I needed this.
- Get out of the way, come on.
- Oh no, well I'm just gonna go around then.
(laughter)
- That soup's done.
I'm gonna grab that soup.
- Yeah, you're supposed to grab that,
but dude that, no, no, no--
- You have to say, "behind you" when you walk up
behind somebody with something hot.
- Behind you, behind you chef, behind you.
- Ahh, I gotta go clean this.
- Yes, go clean it.
I got the tomato, don't worry.
Keep cleaning because that's all you're good at, chef.
- God damn it.
(laughs)
- Now beratement, that's seems like a thing that happens--
- Hey outta the way!
Wash that dish while you're up there.
Do something.
You got time to lean, you got time to clean.
- What's the worst that you've hurt yourself in a kitchen?
- I've frostbit myself in liquid nitrogen.
- Frostbit?
- Yeah, frostbite was the worse.
- Oh my god.
- It was so cold that I couldn't feel it happening.
The next day my finger turned black and almost fell off.
- I saw it.
It was gross.
- Here's a question too.
How often are you nicking yourself?
- When you see somebody that's cut and burned themselves
a lot, that's somebody that lacks finesse.
Scars and the battle wounds don't mean you worked harder,
it means that you're a sloppy chef.
- So, here's the thing with this level.
There's an earthquake and
it's going to split the kitchen in half.
- What is going on?
(laughs)
You know this is a much more efficient kitchen layout
aside for the fact that there's an earthquake that happens
about every thirty seconds.
- When you've had a long day cooking in a big ol' earthquake
kitchen, what do you wind up cooking for yourself when it's
just like, I need food, I need sustenance,
I've been cooking all day.
- If you're cooking in a burger earthquake restaurant,
the last thing you want to have is a burger afterwards.
So you're gonna have something completely different.
- I'll eat scrambled eggs or a turkey sandwich.
Pretty boring stuff.
- We are going to try versus mode.
Michael and I are on one restaurant.
Bryan and Rekha are on the other
and we're just going to see how well
we can run this restaurant.
- Okay, we're split up.
- You guys already know what's going on.
- I'm on the left here.
- This isn't versus, it's cooperative.
- Okay no, this is perfect.
- So you need three mushrooms.
- Oh it's a conveyor belt.
- Wait, why did he get that?
- Cause he got--
- Get down there, get the mushroom first before he does.
Yeah, boom, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.
- What else?
You need more mushrooms?
- I need more mushrooms.
- Okay, I need them to give us mushrooms.
- I don't have any mushrooms coming at me.
- Here.
- Ahh, fucking beat you.
- Chef, there you go.
Nope, you can't take my mushroom off my board.
(laughs)
- Yes you can.
I chopped him.
I got it.
- I'm gonna bring this inside.
- Here Bryan, no!
- Oh no, I got fire!
(laughter)
What's going on here?
- Give me an onion or a mushroom
- Oh my whole kitchen's on fire!
- Wait, this is good strategy.
- I'm putting all their stuff back.
- I'm just gonna let the place burn.
- I'm gonna put your produce back on the conveyor belt.
- How do I do this?
- So, this is called sabotage.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- I need another onion.
- Yes, chef.
I'll take his.
- I can't put it out.
- There we go.
- You trying to burn my kitchen down, too?
- Oh I can chop this too.
- My mushroom soup's there.
- I chopped this for you.
See I'm putting all their stuff on their cutting board.
- Get you mushroom outta my way.
- Well we need the--
cause our tickets are these.
Right, are we blue?
- What are you doing?
- I can't use that.
- The mushroom? Yeah!
Our tickets are up here.
- Oh I thought we were red the whole time.
(laughter)
- That's what I was saying!
- Come on, that's why.
- That's what I've been saying.
- I'm making the wrong soup.
- I try to keep giving you mushrooms.
- This ticket system is not right.
- It's okay.
- This sucks.
- So we're on mushroom?
- Yeah we're on mushroom.
- The guests don't care about y'all's drama.
I'm telling you that right now.
- I know, I know.
I'm trying to get one.
- What do you need?
Tell me what you need.
- What you're loading up here is good.
I just gotta coordinate it here.
- You need to work a little faster, chef.
- I need a tomato and I need a mushroom.
- Okay tomato soup.
What else, chef?
- I need--
- I need communication.
- Tomato. Tomato is what I need.
I need a clean plate.
- Clean plate, yes chef.
- Tomato.
- And I need a shit ton of mushroom.
- Shit ton of mushrooms.
I don't know that that's an official term,
but I will give you a shit ton of mushrooms.
- Thank you.
- There's a soup right there ready for you.
- Look at that, that's teamwork right there.
- Yeah.
- Oh I don't need another tomato.
I need a third mushroom.
- Yep, put it down on top of that onion.
- Yes, chef.
- Chopping that.
- Great.
- And I need a clean plate.
- Clean plate, yes chef.
(Bell rings)
- Time's up, let's see how we do.
- We did very badly, that's okay,
but for not knowing which side our tickets were on.
- Considering the fact that I was actually working
for you at one moment because I really thought that
I was on the red team, we made it happen.
Well at least three orders after we figured out that we
were actually working in the right kitchen.
- It's 120 to 32.
- Is this more fun or stressful for you?
- This has the same anxiety as working in a real restaurant
for sure.
- Absolutely.
- Wow.
- When things are not happening fast enough for you,
just like in a real kitchen where you're trying hit
the button like "move faster chef" and it's not happening.
- Yeah.
- Yeah that same anxiety certainly comes through
in this game.
- Good job developers of Overcooked.
How would you reinterpret any of these very simple
dishes in a way that you might find more interesting.
- Tomato soup could've been finished with a little
creme fresh swirl or something.
Maybe some chopped cilantro over the top or basil.
- Sure.
- What about a different kitchen function?
Whether it's a dishwasher or a something.
- Scrap all the plans for these kitchens.
Completely rebuild 'em.
Put everything in a little bit more efficient manner.
- So you can actually get the tickets out on time.
- Yeah, okay.
- And we'd put ads out for more employees, for sure.
- Okay.
- We mostly hire humans to be chefs too.
- That's all the time we have for this episode.
Thank you again to our guest experts,
Michael and Bryan Viltaggio.
If there's a game you'd like to see us play,
let us know in the comments
and thanks so much for watching.
I'm a vegetarian and I would've been pretty sad
to each at these restaurants.
- Why? You could've had lettuce or tomato.
(laughter)