Exclusive Interview: Kristen Kish Talks Restaurants at the End of the World, Bringing People Together Through Food, and More

Kristen Kish is a world-renowned chef, entrepreneur, and host who has blazed a trail in the culinary world.

Her latest project, Resturants at the End of the World, is an adventure docuseries that combines all the flavors that make for heaping servings of must-see TV. The four-part series finds Chef Kish as she searches for the secret ingredients—people, places, culture, and traditions—within the world’s most remote restaurants in Boquete, Panama; Svalbard, Norway; North Haven Island, Maine; and Paraty, Brazil. Running any successful venture takes a certain tenacity and grit, but those who set up deep in the wild, cut off from the grid and normal supply lines, are in a class all their own. Chef Kish goes behind the scenes and embeds herself with local purveyors, farmers, herders, kitchen crew, managers and head chefs to listen to their stories and witness the day-to-day balancing act required to bring unique food to the table, meal after meal. She then dives into the depths of the land to forage only the freshest ingredients and, along the way, unearths the culture and heart behind the cuisine.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Kristen about Resturants at the End of the World, bringing people together through food, discovering her voice, and more.

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PC: Congratulations on your new Nat Geo show, Restaurants at the End of the World. This project has been years in the making and started with the idea of exploring people, chosen family, given family, and family in general. How did it eventually evolve into the series that we see today?
Kristen: Television creation is a long process, so it can start with an idea years before. 2020 happened and that cut out a lot of actual active work time on this. But Nat Geo found interest in it. They found interest in the idea that we had. Nat Geo is such an iconic brand that I knew I could trust what they wanted to do with the idea and make it something even bigger than what I had imagined. So they got a hold of it and threw their adventure spin on it. But what was never lost was the idea of telling stories of great people.

PC: You’ve said in the past that every challenge that you faced in the kitchen has made you a better chef, but I don’t think you can imagine some of the scenarios that these chefs in these remote locations face. How did their ingenuity inspire you during and after filming?
Kristen: Every single one of them gave me something different. I left feeling very, very different both personally and professionally. But I think the thing that ties them all together professionally for me is this idea of allowing themselves not to have control of every single outcome. It’s like, “Well, I can’t control every single outcome because Mother Nature has its own plan,” and being in the remote parts of the world allows them only to have certain things when they want them. Modern conveniences aren’t there anymore. All of them have this idea of what will be will be, and they’re going to figure it out a lot of the time at the moment, hours before they’re serving people. They do it with such joy, playfulness, and a sense of relaxation that I don’t normally have in that instance. I had to settle into that because otherwise, I was probably going to make them more nervous being a ball of nerves.

PC: What’s so interesting about each chef’s journey is that often when you’re getting started you’re cooking other people’s food. As time goes on, you’re discovering your own voice and what you want to say through your food. What’s had the biggest development on your own style of cuisine? What advice did you share with these chefs?
Kristen: For a long time, like you were saying, you cook someone else’s food, and then you step out there. The first step I made outside of cooking for someone else, I was very much in my head. I was cooking with a lot of ego, and I was cooking like I needed to make my mark. When in reality, the only story that hasn’t been told in food is my story, my perspective, and my point of view.

It was one dish. I was filming in Berlin for 36 hours a long time ago. I sat at this tasting menu counter, and the chef served this very simple dish of steamed whitefish, a potato puree, and spinach juice as a sauce. I ate it and I was like, “God, it’s so simple, but holy sh*t, this is perfect.” Because it fit him, I got to know him. I understood that he grew up on steamed vegetables, a piece of fish, and some mashed potatoes. He brought it up to this level that was exceptional. At that moment, I was like, “I’m not cooking my story. I’m trying to cook the story of success, and I need to settle into my food story, my history growing up in the Midwest and finding comfort in food.” That was a turning point in my culinary career.

PC: Beautifully said. They really put you through the wringer in this series. Was there a moment when you stopped and said, “Wait, what do you want me to do?”
Kristen: There’s a lot of uncertainty in all this filming. I didn’t meet the chef until I met them on camera. They kept us very, very much separated. They were very good at making sure any discovery was happening on camera for the most authentic reaction because I can’t act. If I were to meet someone eight times, the second to the eighth time would be a disaster. They did ask me a lot of overarching things before we went out to film like, “Would you be comfortable if we had you dive in the Arctic?” They floated these ideas around. Then they’d be like, “Are there any things that you will absolutely not do?” I was like, “Well, I don’t know, but what I do know is I’m never going to go bungee jumping. That’s not going to happen.” So they’re not going to throw me in there and make me go bungee jumping. There was a consideration for what I felt comfortable doing physically because no one wants to put me in that spot.

PC: One of the reasons why I think people have connected with you is you’re so down to earth. Something that was so fun to watch with this series is that you’re able to incorporate your personality and humor into this experience, which makes audiences feel like they’re on this ride with you. How were you able to connect so easily with these different chefs and build that trust?
Kristen: I had six days filming with these people and I had one day off. So I had seven days, and oftentimes on my day off, I would hang out with them as well because I was like, “Okay, when you have seven days to get to know somebody, you give it everything that you can.” The credit doesn’t go to me. The credit goes to these people being genuinely wonderful people that you want to spend time with and that are so incredibly passionate about showing you everything from tours of their homes to making sure that I got to meet their kids properly and spending time with their family and friends. All of those things that happened off camera lent themselves to our being connected on camera. That was something that I really, really enjoyed because they were all genuinely fantastic people that you want to get to know more.

PC: Something that this series does brilliantly is it highlights the resilience of the human spirit. What do you hope audiences take away after they see it?
Kristen: There’s so much in this show for people that don’t even like restaurants, that don’t like food programs, but I think all of us, just as humans, can find interest in how someone else lives. We see it all over YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. A day in a life is a wildly successful idea. It’s because we are curious about how someone else lives their life in a way that feels different or slightly different from how we live our lives. It’s just this natural human curiosity that we get to explore all the time. So I hope that regardless of the title of the show and my profession that just understanding someone else is intriguing and creates interest.

PC: How much do you have a say in the locations that you go to? If we’re lucky to have more adventures, what’s left on your bucket list?
Kristen: There are so many places. There’s obviously a lot of planning involved. There’s the timing of working with these folks, timing of logistics, and a lot of other things. We have an amazing creative department. Missy was leading the charge in the creative and meeting and vetting these restaurants and people pre-production. She goes out there months before I even go out there to make sure that there’s a story and that these people can actively convey their story and that there’s potentially a real-life event happening at the end of it that we’re going to work towards—and that they actually want us there. It’s a mutual decision based on who they are and whether they want us to be there. But it comes to me when it’s ready, which I like because I don’t need to know anything until you tell me that it’s time to go there. Because I will go. I’ll go anywhere. I’m not great in the heat and I’m not great with mosquitoes. There are going to be many more places like that I’m sure. But I’m going to wear just a full-body net of mosquito protection, so everything will be fine.

PC: You’ve been such a trailblazer throughout your career, bringing much-needed representation to the screen for various communities. Have you had time to reflect on the contributions you’ve made? What has it meant for you to highlight your story on a network like Nat Geo?
Kristen: That’s a big question. For a long time, I didn’t really think about it. The idea of being a trailblazer is like, “Holy sh*t.” I’m just trying to live my best life while I get to do all this stuff and find ways of growing my curiosity and my education in ways that obviously I’m very privileged to do by way of my work. I mean, it’s more at the forefront, sure, because of the messages I get and the people reaching out saying how important it is to them—and if that’s it at the end of the day and I just get one or two or a lot of messages from many various communities, that’s what it’s about. It’s that reminder of, “You are in our community and you have done something for us.” That brings it back to the forefront for me. Because sometimes being that person is not this constant thing that I’m always thinking about.

I’m just trying to live my life like everyone else is trying to live their life. But I feel incredibly grateful for people that take the time to send messages and remind me of the fact that I am these things. Because sometimes, specifically speaking of the Asian community, I never thought I was part of it. I felt really insecure about being part of it because I didn’t grow up with an Asian family. I left Korea. I grew up as an adoptee. And so having that relationship with my culture has been an ongoing emotional growth that I need to go through. So being able to be embraced by the Asian community, saying, “You belong with us too,” that’s necessary. I needed to hear that. Truly needed to hear that.

To keep up with Kristen, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Resturants at the End of the World on Nat Geo today!

Photo Credit: National Geographic for Disney/Autumn Sonnichsen