Photo illustration: Vulture; Photos: Pamela Wurst Vetrini on TikTok, MariadaDesign/Getty Images
For years, a group of private chefs have flocked to eastern Long Island to spend the summer months preparing sumptuous meals for wealthy clients living in not-so-quiet luxury. Mostly young and seemingly cool chefs started documenting their daily lives on TikTok – from waking up at 5am to shopping at expensive grocery stores to working from lush private gardens – and in 2023, their videos finally came together in one place thanks to the curator of content Pamela Wurst Vetrini.
Vetrini has been working as a social media consultant and has been analyzing and sharing TikTok trends on the app for the past three years. She usually focuses on rounding up and explaining general patterns on TikTok, but last summer she couldn’t resist the bell cheese of fresh tomato galettes and thus her own reality show — you name it Top boss on TikTok—was born. “It’s now the official start of my favorite TikTok holiday: my favorite TV series TikTok, I’m a private chef in the Hamptons,” she says in her first video of the series, posted on June 21. “This is a reality competition TV series that none of these contestants signed up for, and I’m the only judge.”
For ten weeks, Vetrini ranked chefs in a Dancing mothers– an inspired pyramid based not only on the meals they cooked, but also on the quality of their videos and any drama they encountered during the week (less “Someone slept with someone’s boyfriend”, more “Someone has oil for cooking on the pool deck”). Unlike the real thing Top boss, the Hamptons’ private chefs are never actually eliminated, but followers still tune in each week to see how things stack up. “These chefs do so much work,” Vetrini says on Zoom. “I just wanted to prepare him and give him a story.”
Why did these chefs make good fodder for reality TV?
I didn’t expect it to become a series. I was joking and people were like, “Okay, we want more.” I watched Meredith from Wishbone Kitchen for several seasons. She was my start in private cooking in the Hamptons. She does such a good job of telling a day in her life, and her clients let her shoot so much footage of their home — you get not just the cooking content, but the interior design content, the aspirational content. They bring friends; they have parties.
The second chef I noticed this summer was Rob. He had such a different angle than Meredith. His content was much more Gen Z, much more modern, much more edited and styled. I was like, I really need to introduce people to Rob because he is one of a kind. And then I started typing “private chefs in the Hamptons” into the search bar and found all these gems. I found Seth who literally had 200 followers on the first video I saw. And now I think he’s close to 20,000.
What do you think is so compelling about their content?
Beats all these eye candy. You get beautiful houses, so you have Nancy Meyers Coastal Grandmother content. You have the ambitious food content. These chefs are spending $600 on a steak for one meal – who’s going to go out and buy that? And then you do gardening. So you have this cottagecore content where they have these beautiful gardens growing fruits and vegetables. It’s just rich porn like watching Inheritance.
There are so many private chefs that in later videos you’re like, “I’ve got to crack some people up.” How do you decide who to feature?
My criteria has always been that they have to cook for a private chef client. They would have weekends where they would come home and go on vacation or cook for their friends, and that wouldn’t qualify. And I’ve always preferred any kind of drama. Once Seth’s car broke down, once Rob spilled oil on the pool deck and had to clean it up, or someone’s grill went out at a client’s house. And I prioritized the contents of the house; I liked when they could give us a sneak peek of where they were cooking, what the space was like and we could feel like we were there. But the chefs kept offering me new chefs and then I had to kick people out. But they assured me they didn’t care. They just loved the show and were happy to be there.
Every reality show has tropes and structures. What would you say is yours?
Well, that’s the hero. Meredith is the best dog. She is consistent and good every week. There’s a heartbreaker: Rob. Then I added a lesbian heartthrob after that: Bri. Heartbreakers sell. Seth was absolutely my underdog. He started with the least amount of followers and people applauded him every week. Then the chefs team up. One of the chefs works with his sister for a week, and then DyAnne and Juliana work together for the same company.
What would you say are the most typical dishes prepared by these chefs?
They love heirloom tomatoes. They love grazing boards. The Lobster Cobb Salad is huge. Everything on the grill. And lots of pizza—they have pizza ovens in these million-dollar homes in the Hamptons.
And they always go to that grocery store.
The citarella is like their closet. They seem to go five times a day. Citarella ended up sponsoring the chefs for an end-of-season party.
I saw that!
They did invite me, but I said, “My kids are going to school. You are all young. You’re going wild.” They had a great party. I got a call from him.
What do the chefs think of the series?
We really like direct messages. They forgave me if I criticized them because they liked to reveal themselves. It got them so many new followers and so much press. All received interviews. When I had a guest judge who was a real chef, I think some of them were a little hurt by some of her comments because they were a little more harsh and focused on technique.
We actually considered doing a cookbook, and that’s still being discussed, but the fame factor of all chefs is so different. They vary so much from the best chef to the bottom chef. Meredith has her own cookbook she is working on. But the concept is still there. Even if I don’t edit it, I hope someone takes advantage of this opportunity. I’ve been told that private cooking is a very isolating experience. They don’t socialize at all and that brought them together.
Do you think something like this is a legitimate competitor to reality TV?
Absolutely. I mean, that’s what I was hoping for. As our attention spans get shorter and shorter, the type of content we want is three-minute TikTok videos. We want them to be authentic, home-cooked, and short, but we still crave the narrative, drama, curation, and organization of content. All the content exists and we just need someone to prepare it for us.
Will the show return next year?
I think I’ll do it next season and probably drop some of the chefs that have already made it big and focus on the smaller chef creators. I just really want them to be celebrated and their work out there because they are so talented.
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