🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

After hours-long stints at restaurant jobs, chef Robbie Jester would go home and put on Big Brother or the Food Network and invest in strangers as they desperately vied for a prize. He’d take notes on their technique, sympathize with them and laugh alongside them. He’d also wonder why they’d do certain things to stay in the game.

After he was cast as a chef on Pressure Cooker, Jester did something not many fans of reality shows get the chance to do: He put himself in the thick of the action, staring down a $100,000 award through a gauntlet of cunning strategy and all-out cooking on a public stage in an entirely new cooking format that combined cohabitating with traditional kitchen challenges. But despite the novel twist, he felt prepared.

“I liked the fact that it’s in the cooking world but works in a completely different format than what I had seen before. I was struck by the idea that I wouldn’t be judged by a panel of celebrity chefs and that my ability to move up wouldn’t just be based on my food. I knew it would be interesting to see how a bunch of chefs interact and how we live our lives,” Jester says. “My strategy was to be at the middle of the road, and then if I got to the end, to take the gloves off.”

Even in combat mode, Jester comes across as a truly likable guy throughout Pressure Cooker’s eight-episode run: eager to cook well and make friends while sticking up for the people he cares about (which is pretty much the whole cast). As the chef and owner of Newark, Delaware’s Italian eatery Pizzeria Mariana, and a private chef at In Jest Events, it’s clear Jester knows how to make the type of comfort food lots of people enjoy. And as competition advanced, it became obvious that he doesn’t quite possess the hard edges some of his other peers employed to inch closer to the winner’s circle.

Spoiler: Jester won. And he did so by being mostly warm and fuzzy — which isn’t such a bad thing when knives and egos are thrashing about. Jester spoke with Tudum about his unexpected win from his East Coast home, where he shared how he felt about the competition, his favorite castmate and the team he won the prize money for.

First, let’s start with your own restaurant, Pizzeria Mariana. What’s it all about?
We bought it in October of last year. It’s a pretty cozy place: There are about 24 seats inside, and when the weather is nice, we have another 24 seats on the patio. We serve Italian and American food, with wood-fired pizzas.

When people finish a meal at Pizzeria Mariana, how do you want them to feel?
No one has ever asked me this before! I want them to feel appreciated.

The chefs try to relax while waiting for the results of an elimination.

Do you think you tweaked your strategy once the show was underway?
Yes, I had to adapt. What I counted on was that the other chefs would be talented. What I didn’t count on, though, was how amazing these chefs are as people. I don’t have any ill feelings toward anyone, even when things got stressful. Of course, that made taking the gloves off kind of hard.

That’s totally understandable. Plus, you’re around them all the time. You’re eating meals together and sleeping next to each other. It wouldn’t be easy to stay in game mode constantly. 
I expected tons of game play! Maybe there was, and maybe I just didn’t see it. But from my end, there just wasn’t that kind of thinking. All but twice I voted based on what people put on their plates. I felt like I made genuine relationships and cooked genuine food. 

I just focused on being who I am throughout the course of the show. It’s hard to focus on what’s on your plate if you’re worried about your position in the group or your position in the house. So for me, it was easier and a lot less muddy to focus on the task at hand.

You have two choices: You can enjoy this time, and hopefully find a way to make it all worth it, whether you win or lose. Or you can make enemies and be on edge, trying to keep your stories straight. So I just chose the path of, in my opinion, less resistance.

Chef Robbie chatting with Chef Lana and Chef Ed.

Who do you think you gravitated toward the most at the beginning of the competition?
Without a doubt, Lana! There’s just something about Lana that’s like getting a great big hug. She’s got a warm smile and [there’s] just an essence about her, so when I walked in and saw somebody as nice as her staring back at me, that was a huge relief. And then, of course, there’s Ed. Because, I mean, what’s not to love about Ed?

Was there anyone that you didn’t necessarily gravitate toward at the beginning of the competition, but gained your trust and respect later on?
Sergei. He said some things early on that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But I learned through the competition that he’s a really sweet guy and exceptionally talented. I grew to love him, and still love him. I want him to be as successful as God has planned.

Is the Pressure Cooker kitchen more or less stressful than the rush at your restaurant at dinner time?
Oh, the Pressure Cooker kitchen is 100 percent more stressful. At my restaurant, I’ve built the systems, I’ve hired the people, all that stuff. And in the Pressure Cooker, you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what you’re making. You’re standing next to strangers. And you’re not really given many details going into it.

Was there any sort of shared strategizing for how to handle the stress of the Pressure Cooker behind the scenes?
It’s funny: We got to know each other well. We all talked a lot. But I don’t think that we talked about how to calm our nerves!

Chef Robbie calls a group hug.

Of all the meals you made throughout the season, which one are you most proud of?
I would say my finale menu, but in particular, my mom’s spaghetti and meatballs. I loved that I got to share that with those chefs and found a way to elevate it. It’s at the core of who I am, and I wouldn’t be the man I am without my mother.

Chef Lana works with Chef Robbie on a challenge.

If you could go back and remake a meal that didn’t go as well, which one would that be?
Probably be the ostrich and smelt dish that Lana and I made in the surf-and-turf challenge. I felt like it lacked one or two more components that would have made it more cohesive. It wasn’t our best effort. And that was the only time that I really, really felt like I should be afraid to go home.

You mentioned how much your staff means to you throughout this show. Who are they?
These are people who have worked with me for years. My sous chef in my private chef business started working at a former restaurant with me when she was 14; she’s 21 now. I went to her high school to do a cooking demonstration, and she kind of shined above her classmates. So I was like, “Hey, do you want a job this summer?” And she's been with me ever since. She’s like a little sister. Then there’s another guy who’s worked with me over the course of three businesses, just a loyal teddy bear of a guy — and funny as hell. I mean, half the stuff that I say on the show that might have been funny probably came out of his mouth first. I really do have a loyal group of people working with me; my mom works with me. We all have our specialties. We all have our weaknesses. But we come together as a team really well, and we stand with each other very well.

We’re working on a few projects now that’ll give them their own creative space. I also started a private chef business, In Jest Events, and I wouldn’t have known that was viable at all without meeting the private chefs on the show. Renee and Mike helped me start it — they told me how to get licensing and clients and which software to use and things like that. I wouldn’t have had the same opportunities without them.

Looking back, how do you think about your time on the show?
Other than marrying my wife, Katelyn, this was absolutely the best thing I have ever done.

Pressure Cooker Season 1 TrailerTime to turn up the heat.

Note: This interview was edited and condensed.