Chef Ben Robinson Explains Exactly What He's Been Up to Lately
The Below Deck alum gave us the scoop on his current chef life, which takes him from casinos to cruise lines to cooking for Jay Leno.
On next week's episode of Below Deck Mediterranean, we'll see a familiar face back in the galley. Spoiler alert ahead: Chef Ben Robinson is the Sirocco's newest (and third) chef this season, and he happily accepted the offer to step back into yacht life. But first, he needed to step away for a while.
The beloved chef recently told The Feast that he took some time away from yachting to dabble in the "art food" he loves creating when he's not up against serious time constraints. So, what has he been up to in the meantime? We have an update from the chef himself.
In the past, Ben has provided teasers of the elaborate feasts he's been whipping up for private parties. He offered some more detail on those fetes, telling us: "I run a catering company, a very exclusive catering company, and I fly all over America to do beautiful events, both corporate and private. I just got back from L.A. ... I did three in L.A., two in Newport Beach, and one in San Francisco. So that's just been the last month. I'll hit five cities in a month."
But it's not just the West Coast that's getting a taste of Ben's cooking. "I've got this big show coming up, [Audrain’s Newport Concours & Motor Week] over in Newport, Rhode Island," he told us. "Jay Leno's gonna be there, John Legend's gonna be there. I'm gonna be doing some cooking demonstrations."
If variety is the spice of life, it's also the secret ingredient in Ben's career. In addition to corporate events, "I've done cooking at casinos," he told us. "I've got casino gigs coming up. I go and do boozy cruise lines. I help them with social media. I do Facebook Lives. I take over their kitchens, stuff like that. Or I'll just go and do a 50th birthday somewhere and we'll just have a ball."
Ben's traveling companion, he told us, is his full-time sous chef. "He's amazing. His name's Greg," Ben shared. "I found him on Craigslist about three years ago. I was hard up in New York City for a chef, and [an] assistant sent over Greg. He just got off a plane from Chicago, but he wanted to work. I realized he was really, really talented, so I kept him... He does a lot of the major labor, and I'm more sort of an art director and a thinker. Obviously, I do all of the prep as well, but it just gives me that chance to step back and really improve things, tweak things."
