Watching food-centric reality shows is a great way to temporarily escape the daily stresses
of life, isn't it?
First launched in 2006, Top Chef is arguably one of the best reality cooking competitions
of all time. The series format is both simple and simply enthralling: participants compete
against one another in the kitchen, trying to impress the show's judges by overcoming
a series of increasingly difficult cooking challenges.
The show's cast includes culinary experts like Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons, and Padma
Lakshmi. Scores of well-known chefs have made guest appearances over the years, like the
late, great Anthony Bourdain, who made over ten appearances on the show between 2006 to
2011. Rest assured, most guest stars are remembered fondly, but one judge was evidently a bit
too much to handle… at least according to Tom Colicchio. The chef in question evidently
made the cast miserable because... well, let's just say he could be very harsh.
"Our guest judge for this round is Mike Yakura, the executive chef of Sutra and Aura in San
Francisco."
Do you remember Mike Yakura? He was a very opinionated judge. When asked about his least
favorite guest judge on Top Chef, Colicchio told Bravo in no uncertain terms that he was
not a fan of Yakura's behavior on the show.
"Michael, Michael, season one, he was just the worst."
"He was very aggressive."
"He was very aggressive, yeah."
Yakura appeared in the first season and did come across as rather aggressive with participants.
For example, when judging the contestants' Latin American fusion food, he called their
dishes "arrogant" and "forgettable." And one meal made him particularly irate.
You see, Yakura got really angry about a burrito. Here's a taste of that anger:
"It's a [bleep] burrito. You just put [bleep] inside of it, and you roll it up."
Despite – or perhaps because of – this behavior, Yakura was given a second chance
on the second season of Top Chef. But it soon became abundantly clear that he hadn't changed
his judging style one bit. He was evidently quite upset about the overall quality of the
dishes and he certainly didn't hold back when offering his feedback. It's probably safe
to say he won't be returning for future seasons.
In the season two episode on which Yakura appeared, participants were asked to whip
up something absolutely delicious using only ho-hum ingredients like Kraft mayonnaise,
Italian salad dressing and barbecue sauce. No small feat. Contestants did come up with
some rather interesting dishes, but it wasn't a particularly easy episode to watch. Okay,
we're lying: It was a totally easy episode to watch because Yakura was mesmerizingly
mean throughout.
With his unpredictable behavior and penchant for being overly critical, is it any wonder
his judging style proved a little too intense for some viewers?
In a piece for MTV, one critic admitted they were so distracted by Yakura's antics, they
couldn't quite focus on the food challenge. The critic wrote:
"Two winners were awarded, rather than one, and I was so terrified by Mike Yakura that
it was difficult to pay attention to what everyone had done."
Taking to Reddit, another Top Chef viewer claimed they did not appreciate the judge's
bad behavior in the episode – not even a little bit:
"Mike Yakura was terrible... he hated everything."
Which, fair enough. After his appearance on Top Chef, Yakura stopped lighting up the small
screen with his fiery temper tantrums. In fact, judging by his IMDb page, he doesn't
have any other television credits to his name. Meanwhile, his Instagram page suggests he's
still quite active in the food industry. Yakura co-owns a restaurant in California called
Spinning Bones; a rotisserie-style eatery. He also co-owns the eatery Noodle Me, which
offers specialty bowls and sides like kimchi.
Yakura is still pretty active on social media. In a post from April 2021, the chef wrote
that he decided to take a leap of faith several years ago when applying for his first cooking
gig as a line chef. Prior to that, he worked as a graphic designer before officially leaving
his office job behind to pursue a cooking career. Yakura also had some experience as
a waiter and a prep chef, but he was mostly self-taught. In his post, he explained why
applying to the job was so significant for him,
"This would become the pivotal moment in my life where I gave up on a cushy office career
and decided to try and swim in a pool with sharks."
How was he to know he'd ultimately fit right in?
"Why is it on the side?"
"Um, it's on the side because we thought it would…"
"There's too much [bleep] on the plate?"
"Serving the judges was a little tricky."
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