YouTube Chef Kevin Dobson on the motor yacht Valor.
Chef Kevin Dobson is the private chef on the motor yacht Valor on Bravo’s Below Deck.
He’s admittedly cocky, according to Decider, and has a knack for fueling the drama between himself and the other yachties on the reality show. He joined the cast of Below Deck on the first episode of the seventh season, in which viewers became acquainted with his delicate stomach and the Valor’s lack of soundproofing, reveals Daily Mail.
Throughout his first season, he frequently butted heads with stew Kate Chastain, who has to share tight quarters with him in the kitchen. He also made her the topic of many of his fratty-sounding conversations with the other guys aboard the Valor. The ongoing tension between the two crew mates helped propel much of the action, causing other drama to spin out of whatever issues the two were battling with each other.
The New Zealander is reported to be a talented chef, according to his bio. In addition to concocting the culinary experience aboard the Valor, he has his own YouTube cooking show called Small Town Cook, where he makes cooking simple.
Here’s everything you need to know about Chef Kevin Dobson from Below Deck:
1. Chef Kevin Dobson Has Been In Memorable Fights
When one of the guests aboard the Valor said he should “go more upscale” with his dishes, he responded by calling her an “Instagram chef.” In the Below Deck Season 7 After Show, he says, “That was just bulls—t… I was like ‘where the f—k do you come off?’”
He’s also been in a fight with Captain Lee, who took to Twitter to express his unhappiness with the Chef (shown above). In episode four, Chef Kevin managed to miscount eight dishes, providing only seven for guest courses so that the Captain did not get a meal. The reason? Kevin ate it himself. The Captain had words for Kevin, which Kevin did not feel were justified says Bravo’s Daily Dish.
Another memorable fight took place in the previous episode, in which Kate tries to take on Kevin and the rest of the guys in the crew when she walks in on them trash talking her. They fight on the deck and wake up the Captain, who comes out into the group without his shirt on, as seen in the clip posted on Bravo. Kate spent the night crying in Simone’s room afterward.
2. Chef Kevin Dobson Is a Father
“After learning about the lifestyle and the payouts” Dobson decided that he’d become a chef aboard a private yacht in order to support his daughter, says his Bravo bio.
While it wasn’t his dream to be a chef on a yacht, it was the money that he needed to provide for his daughter, says TV Over Mind.
Before joining the cast of Below Deck, Dobson lived in New Zealand, but moved his family to Australia. According to Showbiz Cheatsheet, he has a girlfriend who is into yoga.
3. Chef Kevin Dobson’s Back Pain Was Potentially Fake
In the previous episode, Dobson collapses after he has a sudden back spasm and has to be attended to by the first officer of the Valor. He requested that stew Simone go get his pain killers and he appears to be “in excruciating pain,” says Showbiz Cheatsheet.
Kate Chastain, however, thinks he’s faking the whole episode. On the Below Deck After Show, she says that it hit him suddenly and then, by the time happy hour rolled around, the crippling pain disappeared. Coincidentally, this event transpired around the breakup of sous chef Courtney and Brian, she says in her confessional.
“He was laying on the floor like a psycho,” Chastain says in the aforementioned clip. “He was magically cured by dinner,” she continues. Dobson says in the video that the pain was “almost like going through birth.”
4. Chef Kevin Dobson Enrolled in Culinary School at Age 14
According to Dobson’s bio, his first job was at the local bakery in Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. When he reached the age of 14, he went to culinary school instead of high school.
His bio continues that he worked in the hospitality industry in New Zealand before moving to Australia for the food scene there. He claims to have worked in some of Australia’s most highly regarded restaurants. According to the New Zealand Herald, these restaurants include Saffron with Pete Gawron, who is a private chef in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Then, says the New Zealand Herald, he went to the US, then back to Australia before joining the crew of a yacht and has been working on super yachts for six years prior to joining the cast of Below Deck.
5. Below Deck Is ‘Frowned Upon’ In the Professional Yachting World
Dobson tells the New Zealand Herald that when he was making a name for himself in the yachting world, he was approached by Below Deck casting. But he held off because, “my understanding was that it kind of ruins your ticket for any further career in yachting.”
He continues, “The show’s a little bit frowned upon in the professional realm. So I wasn’t really willing to do that just then.” HuffPost says, “Below Deck has given us a view of the worst case scenario of a luxury yachting crew.”
Dobson ends his interview with the New Zealand Herald by saying, “I was finishing up on a boat last year, I got a phone call from the casting person and I was like “f—k it”, so I just went ahead and did [an interview]. She loved me.”
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