Wyoming Celebrity Chef Brought Back After First-Round Knockout On ‘Yes, Chef!’

Chef Petrina Peart was all smiles Monday night at a public watch party at a small bar in Cheyenne to celebrate both her birthday month and a dramatic return to the Martha Stewart-hosted reality television show “Yes, Chef!” after facing elimination in the first round. 

The watch parties not only show episodes of Peart’s triumphant return through the season’s finale, they also feature a multi-course array of dishes inspired by the episode — albeit with chef Peart’s personal twists.

The most recent watch party was held at Brownie’s Tasting Bar, a small bar inside the Town and Country Supermarket Liquors on South Greeley Highway in Cheyenne. 

The courses started off with a roasted carrot infused with fennel, laid onto a deliciously creamy smear of pureed carrot. The whole was topped with fried carrot shavings and some hazelnut topping that had a fancy name. We’ll just call it delicious instead. 

The next course was a very tender and tasty steak tartare, topped with a quail egg, and a fruit tartare made from watermelon and mint. That was served at the appropriate point in the episode.

Everything finished on a lovely, sweet note, with a sample of Peart’s take on a phyllo dough dessert, which chef Jose Andres loved but Stewart panned, telling her off camera, “You just have to learn when to pivot.”

Why ‘Yes, Chef!’?

Peart has made a name for herself in Wyoming as the chef who almost beat Bobby Flay in an episode called “You’re so Buteau-ful” that aired in 2022. 

Since, Peart has continued to shake up the foodie landscape in southeast Wyoming with all vegetarian pop-up dinners as well as becoming a U.S. culinary diplomat. 

The private chef is also now executive chef at the Wyoming governor’s mansion.

Peart started the most recent watch party with a little bit on why she had wanted to do the show in the first place. Namely, because it had been billed as a venue for chefs to work on not just their dishes, but themselves. 

Each of the contestants has a fatal flaw that’s been holding them back in life and the kitchen, whether it’s a Titanic-sized ego, anger more intense than a 503-degree oven on a 107-degree day, or, as in Peart’s case, obsessing to the point of spiraling paralysis. 

Peart told the audience she’d thought the show would offer a chance for some mentorship from two of her idols, Stewart and Andres. Particularly Stewart, who Peart used to watch every day after school with her grandmother.

“I love tablescaping because of Martha,” Peart said. “I think she’s great. She’s had a lot of influence in a lot of people’s lives, including mine.” 

But Peart’s experience on the show wasn’t quite as she’d expected. The mentoring wasn’t as big an element as she’d hoped for.

Not only that, she found herself unceremoniously eliminated in the very first round after making an unfortunate, overly watery gazpacho. 

The Jitters

“It was jitters,” Peart told Cowboy State Daily. “There was a part in the cooking where I had to kill a lobster, which is something I used to do in the past, and it’s not something I care to do anymore. I used to work on the Las Vegas Strip, and I had to (kill) these things 1,000 at a time, and it just became an aversion.”

Her difficulties killing the lobster started a vicious downward spiral, which ultimately led to a gazpacho she knew wasn’t her best. 

The choice of gazpacho proved particularly unfortunate, given that Andres is a Spanish-born chef. He knows how to make gazpacho with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back.

But things got even worse for Peart from there. Knowing she’d made the worst dish of the night, a gazpacho she could never live down, presented to a chef whose native language involves tasty gazpacho, she fully expected to face elimination. 

All she hoped for at that point was a chance to fight for her survival.

Teaching Katsuji A Lesson?

That chance, however, was denied, thanks to behind-the-scenes machinations between that night’s Most Valuable Chef, Michelle Francis, who was invulnerable from elimination that night, and a loud-mouth chef on the losing team, chef Katsuji Tanabe. 

Peart found her fate being inexplicably decided by others, while she stood by watching on the sidelines, not really sure what had happened until after the first episode aired. 

That’s when she saw for the first time how Tanabe implored Francis to pick him for the challenge cook-off instead of Peart. 

He told Francis that when he won the cook-off, he would be sure to remove Peart. Since she’d made the worst dish, Tanabe said, she should really be the one to go.

Francis had, all along, been leaning toward picking Peart for the cook-off since Peart had made the night’s worst dish. 

It was never clearly explained why Francis changed her mind about that. Perhaps it was Tanabe’s off-handed suggestion that there was zero doubt he would beat Francis in a cook-off.

As Most Valuable Chef of the evening, Francis was immune from elimination even if she lost a cook-off with Tanabe. She could safely challenge this formidable but arrogant chef and perhaps teach him a lesson in the process. 

A Game Of Dirty Chef

Ultimately, Tanabe did beat Francis just as he’d boasted he would — in part, by demonstrating the huge ego issues that landed him on the show in the first place. 

He nabbed a juicy steak he had no intention of using during the cook-off just to deny it to Francis.

That left her with mushy fish, which overcooking could not cure.

Despite the “Yes, Chef!” premise of helping contestants overcome oversized egos, short tempers, confidence issues, and other problems, Tanabe faced no consequences for playing dirty. 

In fact, he seemed to be lauded for it. 

Tanabe did, however, do as he’d promised he would do. He sent Peart packing. 

First A Nightmare, Then Sweet Revenge

The whole thing left Peart quite deflated. Here was her worst fear made real. Going out in the very first round, with no chance even to show what she was really capable of doing.

Peart was sent to a different set of rooms to wait out the competition until the end. Because she was, in that sense, still on location, she did harbor a tiny, little hope in the very back of her mind that there might be some way back onto the show.

And that is exactly what happened in Episode 6, called “Sweet Revenge.”

Peart and several other eliminated chefs all returned for a chance to fight their way back onto the show in a blind taste test.

The eliminated chefs squared off against each other first, to earn their shot at redemption. The two who cooked the dishes that Stewart and Andres liked best would score a chance to challenge a surviving chef for their spot on the show.

The surviving chefs, meanwhile, squared off against each other, and the bottom three dishes put those chefs at risk of being challenged.

All tasting was blind, so Stewart and Andres had no idea which chefs they were choosing for either redemption or elimination. 

Peart had another very close call in the eliminated chef round when her fancy, delicate, crunchy pastry called tuile started falling apart. 

“It’s like the first episode all over again,” she said, visibly shaken.

But this time, Peart avoided any further downward spiral. In fact, she used the breakup to her advantage, crafting an out-of-the-box presentation that chef Andres particularly admired.

“It’s like I’m eating a soup,” he said. “But it’s a pastry.”

“Deconstructed,” Stewart agreed.

A Delicious Dish Spiced With Drama

With her shot at redemption in hand, Peart faced a difficult choice. Which chef to challenge. 

Briefly, she considered choosing the easiest chef. But that didn’t sit right for her.

“I wanted to win by choosing to battle one of the best,” Peart said. “I felt like that would solidify my place, coming back into the competition. I wanted to do the work to get back in. So, I thought if I could beat who they think is one of the best chefs, then maybe there’ll be some respect there.”

Ultimately, her choice of chef Christopher Morales ruffled a few feathers — including Morales, who predicted he would easily send Peart packing for a second time.

But ultimately, it was Peart who sent him packing instead. That’s put the Wyoming chef back in contention for the ultimate, $250,000 cooking prize — much to the chagrin of the remaining chefs, who hadn’t envisioned such a reversal, and hated that she sent their friend home.

That is creating some new tensions on the show that Peart told her audience at Brownie’s she’s not used to dealing with when she’s just trying to make a delicious dish.

Whether she’ll make it to the end of the competition is yet to be seen — and Peart wasn’t handing out any hints to spoil the watch parties to come. 

Peart plans a new watch party each Monday night right on through the show’s finale at Brownie’s. Tickets for the next are available for purchase online. Each watch party comes with a range of dishes inspired by the show.

The number of watch parties ahead gives all of Peart’s Wyoming fans hope that she makes it to the very end, no matter what gets thrown at her during this unusual reality television series. 

But, even if she doesn’t, the dishes Peart is serving at her Watch Party are delicious and one-of-a-kind. Her fans have no problem saying that Peart is already a winner in their book, no matter what Stewart and Andres decide.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.