The host of Dropout’s new cooking show wants you to ‘have more fun’ with your food

The comedy streaming service Dropout is breaking ground in a highly competitive genre of television: the cooking competition show. Its new series, Gastronauts, brings Dropout’s comedic talent and penchant for zany antics to the well-worn genre with something just a little less cutthroat than you’ll see on other cooking shows.

Hosted by comedian, writer, and actor Jordan Myrick, each episode of Gastronauts features three chefs competing in a series of cooking-based challenges. The twist? The judges are comedians, and the comedians are setting the challenges. Prompts this season include making the heaviest meal (by weight), making a habitable environment for dinosaur chicken nuggets, and making an edible action figure you can play with while eating. But the judges are also being judged — unbeknownst to them, the chefs pick which judge gave the best challenge, leveling the playing field a bit.

Polygon spoke with Myrick about their history with cooking, having fun with food, and course-correcting the energy of chefs who came in expecting a very different vibe.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Polygon: Congratulations on the show finally coming out!

Jordan Myrick: Thank you so much. It feels like it’s been a hundred thousand years since the trailer launched, so I’m glad it’s finally here. I don’t have to answer to my parents asking me over and over again when it’s coming out because they refuse to write it down on their calendar.

When people like your parents ask you what the show is, how do you describe it to them?

I always start out just by saying it’s a comedy cooking show, and then I gauge their interest from there. If they seem like they want to know more, I’ll be like: “Oh, if you’ve ever seen Chopped or Top Chef, it’s similar to that in the sense that you have professional chefs who have cooking challenges, but the twist with Gastronauts is that we give them crazy cooking challenges that were all crafted by comedians, but the food still has to taste good.” So that’s my longer spiel.

I’d love to hear more about your relationship with food and cooking and cooking competition shows. What’s your background there?

I’ve always loved food and cooking ever since I was a child. My mom and I have always cooked a lot together. My grandma and I wrote a cookbook when I was little that my dad printed and laminated and we still have. So it’s always something that I’ve been very, very interested in. And I grew up on the Food Network, like Unwrapped and Rachael Ray. All of those shows were what I was coming home from school every day and watching. So I’ve always loved it. I went to NYU for college for acting. I did their BFA acting program at Tisch, and since I am a classically trained actor, that means I’ve worked in restaurants for a hundred years in pretty much every position you can. I’ve done bartending, serving, hosting, I’ve done delivery, I’ve worked food festivals, all types of things. And other than the customers, I really enjoyed it because I just like working with food.

That being said, I’ve always wanted to be a comedian. I’ve done comedy for a long time. I started doing long-form improv in high school and got really into it. My team started doing festivals. I took classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade all throughout college. And then my first job out of college was I got on the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company, which weirdly enough is where I met two of my best friends, who are also Dropout hosts, Rekha Shankar and Lily Du. We worked that job together, as well as Luke Field, who also used to work at Dropout and now still does some Dropout stuff. So it feels like a very crazy and serendipitous coincidence.

It feels like hosting a show like this could be a dream come true in the nexus of your various interests, but I have to imagine it might be intimidating to host a show like this. Did you find that at all?

I was nervous going into it. I also creative produced the show, so I had a lot of hands-on, behind-the-scenes stuff, which I think made me feel more comfortable. But I was nervous going into it just being like, Yeah, you’re hosting. The lift is so heavy. I’ve hosted a lot of live shows and I do find myself to be good at that, and I enjoy it. 

So I was feeling positive, but still, you never know how something like that is going to turn out until you do it. But I felt so lucky because I’d never been on a set where everyone was at the top of their game and also simultaneously so nice. Our director, Morgan [Evans], was so wonderful to work with. I had an earpiece in my ear for all of it where Morgan would be telling me things or feeding me things or be like, “Move on to the next thing” or whatever. And there were so many moments when Morgan would start to talk and as he was talking, I was saying something and then he’d be like, “Never mind, you already did what I was just about to tell you to do.” And I mean everyone from the PAs to the camera crew to the sound people to the medic on set, everyone was just so nice and easy to work with, and that really put me at ease.

I have to imagine that hosting a cooking competition show is very different from other hosting gigs. Were there any elements of it that surprised you?

I think working with chefs — which I had done in a culinary way, but not in a comedy way before — felt different. And most of the live shows that I’m hosting are comedy shows, where they’re either other comedians or audience members who are there to see a comedy show. And some of the chefs would come in real hot, they’d be like, “I’m the best and I’m ready to win.” And I’d be like, Oh, OK, great, cool. And then after the first round, they would be like, “I’m sorry I came in so hot. This is much more fun and chill than I thought it would be.” So I think that was kind of really convincing the chefs that this is a good thing. We’re not trying to pull anything on you that’s going to mess you up. We want you to do a good job. It’s more fun to see people enjoy what they’re doing and make delicious food than it is to watch people mess up. So I think just getting them to [feel] like: You’re safe here. And I think they all eventually got that, but I think some people were a little skeptical at first.

One of the things that really jumped out to me from the first episode is how different the vibe feels from most cooking competition shows. As a creative producer as well as a host, how would you describe the vibe that you tried to foster on set?

I wanted everyone to feel so excited and happy and comfortable, because I am a big believer in positivity in work. Intimidation, being rude, or acting like you’re better than other people or anything like that in a work environment makes me very kind of reactive. I don’t respond well to it. I’m kind like, OK, well, fuck you. So I was like, I just want everyone to be nice and have a good time. And that wasn’t hard with Dropout, which was wonderful, but I also just tried to lead by example as the person hosting the show, being like, Everything’s good, everything’s fun, everything’s easy. My mom’s an ICU nurse, and we’re not doing that. We’re just doing a little comedy show. It’s fun. We all get to eat. And also I think hyping up the chefs as well, and being like, “Even if you messed up something that’s kind of to be expected. You’re doing this for the first time and it’s not an easy thing to do.” So being like, “Yeah, you messed up this one thing, but these other elements of what you did were really cool and we liked that.” Trying to hit all of it on camera and from behind the scenes from a more positive point of view.

Another way the show accomplishes this is by having comedians as the judges. It eschews the typical cooking competition format by not having highfalutin chefs. Was that in the premise from the beginning?

As long as I’ve been attached to the project, yes. We’ve always wanted to have comedians setting the challenges and judging, because once again, we want it to feel fun. It’s not fun to watch Oscar Montoya be like, “This is bad and you’re stupid.” It’s so much more fun to watch Oscar have fun. That being said, I did encourage the judges — because I think everyone’s so nice that a lot of people’s impulse was, “I didn’t love that, but I didn’t want to be rude.” And I’m like, “Great, you are not a rude person. So just be honest, like, ‘The taste is a little off for me, but the presentation is beautiful.’ Get a little compliment sandwich or give a good and a bad. You can be 100% honest about your view, but don’t beat people up.” But that being said, none of these judges were going to beat anyone up anyway, so it was not hard.

Then there’s the secret challenge at the end where the chefs are secretly judging the judges. It’s such a fun twist on the format.

I feel like that was kind of a last-minute thing we threw in. It certainly wasn’t part of the plan from the beginning, but we were like, “Hey, you know what else could also be fun? Why not?” It takes two seconds at the end, and the judges ended up getting really excited about it in the episode. So that was fun that this little small seedling of an idea that we had ended up being something that people seem to really enjoy.

What were you looking for in terms of chef guests?

I think we were really focused on someone who was great at cooking, but also enjoyed being on camera. There are so many wonderfully talented people who cook for a living who just don’t want to be filmed, and that makes so much sense. Most people don’t want to be filmed and shouldn’t want to be filmed. It’s a very bizarre thing to desire as a career. So that being said, I think we did need people who actively want extra attention, which some chefs really do and some chefs really don’t. And then I think also just a diverse background. We wanted to see a lot of different types of people. We had private chefs, we had sous chefs, we had head chefs, we had people who had owned their own restaurants, we had influencers. We had all different types of people from all different professional backgrounds as well as culinary backgrounds, as well as personal backgrounds. And that was something that was really important.

And then on the judges’ side, obviously you’re pulling from Dropout’s pool of talent, but were there any specific things that you wanted out of the judges? Did you want to make sure they didn’t have too much cooking knowledge?

No, not particularly. I think we tried to get a good smattering, and we had a lot of different people. Like Mike Trapp is in an episode, and he’s one of the best home cooks I know. Mike makes so many incredible different dishes, so we kind of tried to space it out with some people who are experts and some people who know literally nothing; Lily could not have less culinary knowledge. And when y’all see her episode, that will be revealed to you. The things that Lily eats on a daily basis are disgusting. So much so that sometimes I will bring her lunch so she doesn’t eat whatever weird thing I know she would fix for herself. I think having a mix of people that had varying levels of skill and also varying levels of interest was important. Some people are really passionate about this and have really big thoughts and hot takes. Some people don’t know a plate of nachos from their own butt, so they have to really be inspired in that moment.

Oscar, in the first episode, learning what spatchcocking is and that other people know what it is was just so funny.

I was so shocked. I was like, “Oscar, listen, obviously not all gay people know stuff about food, but as a gay person, I like to think that most gay people know stuff about food.” And I was really shocked to find out that he didn’t know what spatchcocking was. He had never tasted flavored butter. Just some things that feel, like, culturally feel gay to me, and yet Oscar did not know. So that also felt like an important moment for the queer community.

Do you have any dream guests or judges for potential future seasons?

So many. I feel like in terms of comedians — well, Maria Bamford’s my favorite comedian. I think she’s so funny and so interesting and so nice. When I was in college, she did this thing where she rented out a theater and you could pay 25 bucks and come, and she would answer any of your questions about the industry, and she brought her contract and let everyone read it. It was so nice and so helpful. And also she’s the funniest, and I think she would have really fun, funny food commentary. So she’s someone I would love to have on eventually. And in terms of cooking, I mean, I want to see the Top Chef judges cooking on my show.

I think that’s a very attainable goal.

Like maybe we could make it happen.

If you were a judge on Gastronauts, what challenge would you set?

I love on cooking shows when all of a sudden they’re like, “Everybody switch dishes!” I think that’s really fun because I think you really get to see creativity at work, but you also have kind of a strong base, right? If everybody’s good at cooking, chances are they’ve at least brunoised some vegetables for you or something. I think that’s a fun challenge. And also chefs get really upset about it because they’re very protective of what they’re doing. And so I think that’s fun without being too upsetting.

Oh, and someone has to make me a snack during the challenge. I dunno how that would factor into judging, but I would like that.

Is there anyone that particularly impressed you this season?

Well, everyone was so incredible. What I was most impressed by was the ability of so many of these chefs to flirt with me while cooking. I was shocked. They’re in the middle of making this incredible thing, but would really stop and take time to be like, “You’re beautiful.” Really kind of lay it on thick. And I think that’s a great strategy. And I specifically think of chef Jessica Tiffany, who’s in the first episode, and then there’s also a chef named Arturo. And both of them I was like, Are we about to kiss as they’re in the middle of just absolutely demolishing a cooking challenge? And I thought that was really impressive.

Maybe Gastronauts season 2 would be a dating show rather than a cooking show.

Maybe there’s more kissing in season 2 of Gastronauts. I don’t know. We’re not even there yet, but we could see it.

Is there anything from your experience with the show that you’ve taken into your own cooking or your relationship with food that’s changed how you think about food, either while you’re cooking or eating or watching shows?

I think to have more fun with it. I think it’s really easy to get in a rut, but I saw so many people do so many fun and creative things that I was like, Oh, I want to do that at home, but also just be more creative at home in general. Also, just leaning into the fact that bananas look like penises. I think that’s a huge takeaway that the fans will have from the show; it’s OK to accept that bananas are phallic, because even professional chefs couldn’t escape that in so many of the Gastronauts challenges.

The first episode of Gastronauts is now streaming on Dropout. New episodes will be released every other Friday.