New Cooking Show Takes Viewers on a Culinary Adventure

LGBTQ streaming network Revry will inspire your taste buds with its newest original series, Jonathan’s Kitchen: Seasons to Taste.

Hosted by gay chef and author Jonathan Bardzik, audiences can expect a tantalizing, eight-episode cooking show. Bardzik is the author of three cookbooks including Seasons to Taste: Farm-Fresh Joy for Kitchen and Table, which is the inspiration for this fresh new cooking show. With even fresher ingredients, Bardzik shares seasonally inspired recipes and the people they bring together.

Jonathan’s Kitchen will take viewers through recipes and techniques accessible to beginners and innovative enough for experienced home cooks.

Self-taught, Bardzik started cooking professionally 10 years ago while performing in front of live audiences offering weekend demos at the historic Eastern Market in Washington D.C., where he shares a home with his husband, Jason. He has cooked with more than 900 audiences, which has earned him coverage from the Washington Post, USA Today, and Food Network Magazine.

Bardzik stepped away from the kitchen to chat more about the show with OFM, as well as his favorite recipes and advice he would offer to any aspiring chef.

What can viewers expect from your show, Jonathan’s Kitchen: Seasons to Taste?
It is based on my second cookbook, and it is eight episodes across all four seasons of the year celebrating farm fresh food and the people we share it with. The real heart of the show, though, is joy and connection. For me, food is about bringing people together, sharing time, building community, and having conversations. I think they are going to see something that they may not expect from a cooking show. A lot more talking, a lot more conversations and storytelling, and ultimately, coming together at the dining room table at the end to continue to share our day and share our lives together.

You have done several TV appearances over the years, but this is your first time doing a TV show. What made you want to move forward with this project?
I had been collaborating with Bear World Magazine and Richard Jones, submitting some recipes and stories to him for the magazine, and he was looking to get into television. I had been thinking of TV for a long time, but for me, so much of food television is run by sponsors and networks. I really wanted to have my specific voice heard and be unabashedly me, whether that is as a gay man, as a husband, as someone who cooks for friends and family. Richard was the first person who I really felt a level of trust with, to put this project in his hands and then co-produce it together.

How has Jonathan’s Kitchen been received?
Incredibly well. Even better than I had hoped. When you create something like this, you don’t know if people are going to get everything that you were trying to do. Did you successfully deliver everything that you hoped to create? The reception has been incredible. I think one of my favorite quotes that has come out, Randy Shulman, who is the editor of Metro Weekly, which is a local LGBTQ publication here in the D.C. market, said, ‘this brings a whole new level of authenticity to the cooking show genre.’

When we were creating this show, we did the filming in the fall of 2019, so this is all pre-COVID, I had been looking at the world that we live in and the lives that we live, and so many of us are so mobile. We are often living in new places all the time, we are living in apartments in any city in the country, we are eating the same food at the same restaurants, buying the same ingredients in grocery stores, but often, we are not deeply embedded in communities with friends and family. I feel we are getting disconnected. So, I wanted to make this virtual space for people to come into and feel part of the community. Come into the house and feel, as the audience, that they were hanging out with us and sharing these stories while sitting down at the table together.

That feeling of connection, would you say that is the number one thing you hope audiences take away from the show?
Here’s the number-one thing I hope they take away, and I say it in the introduction to each episode. It is the belief that drives everything that I do. I believe that life can and should be lived with joy every single day, and I find that joy so excessively by preparing a simple meal, sitting at a table, and sharing it with people that I love. I truly believe that everyone, regardless of experience, income, background, whatever, everyone deserves to feel that joy every day, and food is so leveling to me.

I started cooking seriously after graduating from college, and I certainly had the privilege of a roof over my head, a supportive family, and meals on the table, but I did not have much else financially coming out of college. Learning that I could cook dinner, set a table, and elevate the quality of life far beyond what I would have had access to otherwise, I love sharing that with people. I think everyone should get to sit down at the end of the day and feel like their life is something worth celebrating, and they have the ability to do that.

What has been your favorite part about filming Jonathan’s Kitchen?
One, sharing this with the people who were a part of the show. Guests, friends, family, producers, experts, people I have worked with for years—it was so special to be with them on set, develop these episodes, and talk about the stories and recipes that were going to be a part of the show. I think, if there is one moment that really stood out for me in filming as being the most special, at the end of episode three, which is an episode that I share with my parents, my husband, Jason, walks through the front door. My dad is setting the table, so he is the first person Jason comes to, and dad walks over and gives Jason a big hug. Jason then walks into the kitchen; my mom gives him a big hug and kiss. I come in from having just grilled some chicken in the backyard, and we all sit down at the table and share a meal together.

At dad’s suggestion, he brings up the wedding that we had celebrated 10 years earlier at my family’s home. For me, that was special. Not just because it is personally important, but I look at reality TV, and although it does a great job of giving so many people visibility, so often, it suggests that we get there through a lot of pain and strife. What’s special to me about this scene is that nobody had to cry, there was no confessional chair, you did not have to hear my mom and dad say, it took this, but we finally accepted them. The acceptance happens when Jason walks through the front door and gets a hug from my dad. Especially since we are in Pride Month, I think it is so important that we all know that our lives can look like that.

I am glad you talked about your parents and Jason because that was my next question. How was it inviting them into your culinary world?
It was both incredibly easy and incredibly challenging. They are my life. Jason, my husband, is the person who I share every day with. I cannot imagine talking about food for 15 minutes, or five minutes, without his name coming up because he is my everyday inspiration. He is that person who I share that meal with, and mom and dad have been here supporting me from the start. I think the challenge was coming to understand that there was a difference between the work that I do and this life that we share together. Getting myself comfortable and getting them comfortable with being on set and talking to a camera was a challenge.

One of my favorite stories about this, I was talking to my mom and dad in the summer before shooting. We made the decision, back to this whole idea of community and connection, that the camera was going to be another person in the room. Quite literally, the audience. We said, that’s not the camera, that is every member of the audience sitting six feet away from us. Although it cannot talk back, we are going to talk directly to that audience. The challenge with a camera is, talking to this inanimate object as if it is a person who is special to you. I have gotten used to that over time, but it is tough when you first start.

My dad, who is a big thinker and problem solver, turns to my mom and goes, here is what we are going to do. Every morning, they sit down in my family’s kitchen and have breakfast at a counter. They set up a vase of flowers on the far counter next to the sink and would include the vase of flowers in the conversation every morning to get used to talking to an inanimate object as if it were another person in the room.

How did you discover your passion for cooking, and who were some of your biggest influences?
I discovered it early. Food was always a center of my family’s life, and I would cook with my mom when I was a kid. I remember three or four years in a row for Valentine’s Day, tackling the most ridiculous, but exciting, Valentine’s Day covered desserts from Bon Appétit. I really got serious about it in my early 20s, and I think it was discovering that kind of power. I don’t mean that in a self-empowered sense as opposed to power over anything, but cooking empowers us to create beauty, magic, and celebrations. That was so exciting for me.

As for major influences, my family, for sure. I have had so many family members who are great cooks. My first boss out of college, I worked for a small plant nursery, and the owner was the primary cook in his household. That was so different for me because at the time, most of the cooks I knew were women. There was something really freeing for him because no one had ever said to him, you are going to grow up, and someday, whether you like it or not, it will be your job to put three squares on the table every 24 hours. To see someone doing this strictly out of passion and joy was so eye opening. Also, people on the show are major influences of mine, particularly Amy Riolo and Marianne Tshihamba, who are both professional cooks, entertainers, and teachers. I have learned so much from both of them.

Like you mentioned, Jonathan’s Kitchen is based on your second cookbook. Which three recipes from the book are your absolute favorite, and do we see these dishes made in the show?
Absolutely. I picked favorites that I knew would end up on people’s tables and would give me the opportunity to talk about some of the techniques that were so influential on me. There are crazy simple dishes, like the herbed tomato salad with feta that I make with my parents in episode three. There is a pumpkin pizza in episode five that I make with Amy that came from a mistake where we thought we were taking the last container of summer tomato sauce out of the freezer and had it spread all over the fresh dough crust before realizing it was the pumpkin from last fall.

If there is a recipe that I make more than any other, and I call it the single most valuable recipe I know, it’s a vinaigrette. I put a vinaigrette on the table whether it is over fresh greens, potato salad, steamed summer veggies—I make one, probably every single day, and there are meals where I make two or three. In episode two, with Soraya Aguilar, we go through, step by step, a vinaigrette, and it is so simple, so magic, and I think it is one of the quickest ways that we can elevate what we cook without needing a lot of expensive ingredients or a lot of difficult technique.

What are some of your food guilty pleasures?
I could eat Chinese dumplings, three meals a day, for the rest of my life. I love dumplings so much. People often say, what’s your favorite ingredient? For me, I think the reason that I cook seasonally is because there’s this constant flow of things that are only around for a few short weeks. It’s sort of like Christmas. Christmas would not be special if it was 365 days a year. This is the answer we hear from our parents when we ask, why can’t there be more Christmases? That, for me, is seasonal food. We are very close to tart cherry season here in the D.C. area, and if I don’t go to the farmer’s market for two weeks, I will miss the entire thing. There is just that anticipation. For me, that is an indulgence and definitely a guilty pleasure.

What is the best advice you can offer to an aspiring chef?
I would give two pieces. If you want to do this professionally, I would make absolutely sure that you fall in love with the work. They display a lot of glamour and excitement on TV, and I think no matter what we do with our lives, if you are writing, if you’re a doctor, if you’re an accountant, if you’re a chef, a lot of it is going to be hard work. A lot of it is going to be discipline and working out the details.

If you are going to commit your life to that, decide to fall in love with it. Make sure that it is something that you can get up and do every day. If what you really love is that moment of inspiration, creation, and just riffing in the kitchen, then do this for fun or find a different way to do it. I think the thing we miss the most when we look at creativity is, there is a reason why it is called creative work, because it is work. I would not have it any other way, but it is definitely work.

The other thing is, I call myself a storyteller cook and author, and the reason that I do that is because I love the attention that chefs have gotten over the last 20 years. I love that we have so many chef-driven restaurants. One phrase I think does a disservice is the idea of a home chef, and it’s because being a chef and running a restaurant is really different from what you are trying to accomplish at home. Cooking at home is about joy, sharing time with people, learning, discovering, and creating. That is not what being a chef is professionally. There is a different goal when you are cooking in a restaurant.

So, I call myself a cook because at home, we are cooking. I think we need to free ourselves up from this feeling that if you do not have a two-year education or cannot tell me which ribs should be in your roast, which ones have the most flavor and the best texture, then you should not hit the kitchen. That is totally wrong. Everyone with the knowledge, ingredients, and the equipment they have should go into the kitchen every single day, have a wonderful time, and be proud of what they prepare.

What more do you hope to accomplish with your platform?
A few things. I am currently working on a second edition of my first book. When I first wrote it, it was about summer and entertaining. Now, I call the book a recipe for joy and connection. I rewrote the stories because I realized this work is not for me anymore. It is not just about setting a nice table or putting good food out, but it is about bringing people together. It is about using that connection to see each other more clearly.

There’s a story in the book where I write about the summer in the city. It was sort of a pastoral of my childhood growing up in the country, but I realized I was doing a disservice to the life I live now that takes place in the country for a few weeks every year, but for the most part, it’s in a city. We are living a little too close to each other, listening to everyone else’s music, and smelling their food. The grill smoke coming in through the back window, and I talk about the smoke of the neighbor’s weed coming in the front window. It is uncomfortable, but it also forces us to know each other, become more familiar, and see each other as more common than different.

That is what I would love to accomplish with this platform. Everybody eats. Food is so universal, and I think it is a wonderful way to take us into other people’s space in a way that does not feel heavy handed or difficult. I do team-building sessions for corporate groups around food, if you have ever had the misfortune of being in a corporate team building event. Usually, at some point, you will be asked some variation to share something deeply personal about yourself with these people you barely know. For most of us, the answer is, I have a lot of personal space. You do not need to know that stuff about me.

However, when you walk in a room and ask someone about their favorite food, everyone has an answer. Then you say, who made this for you? Who was in that kitchen? Who was sitting at the table the last time you had it? Why were you eating there? What were you celebrating together? Suddenly, we are deep in each other’s lives without ever feeling like we have crossed the line. I love that about food. I both respect the power of that and would love to leverage it to bring people closer together. Have us see each other, again, as more similar than different.

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention a plug?
Seasons to Taste started with a cookbook, and that is available on both Amazon and my website. If you want the recipes from the show, plus another 115, plus more stories, you can check that out. My newest book, the second edition of my first book, Simple Summer, will be out later this summer. If you are following me, you will hear all about it!

Stay connected with Bardzik by following him on Facebook and Instagram or visit his official website. All episodes of Jonathan’s Kitchen are available for viewing.

Photos Courtesy of Revry