For many years, private chefs have congregated in eastern Long Island throughout the summer months. Here they cook and prepare extravagant meals for wealthy clients residing in not-so-quiet lavishness. This group of primarily youthful and trendy chefs has taken to TikTok to document their daily lives. The chefs have tracked 5:00 a.m. wake-up calls, shopping at expensive grocery stores, and working from opulent private gardens. Thanks to content curator Pamela Wurst Vetrini, their engaging videos finally merged on one platform in 2013.
Vetrini has been a social media consultant for the last three years, analyzing and sharing TikTok trends. Typically, Vetrini focuses on gathering and explaining general TikTok patterns. However, this past summer, she couldn’t refuse the sight of fresh tomato galettes calling to her, and the concept of her own reality show — a sort of Top Chef of TikTok — was founded.
In the first video in the series, Vetrini says, “It is now the official start of my favorite TikTok holiday: my favorite TikTok television series, I’m a Private Chef in the Hamptons.” The first video was posted on June 21. She continues, “It’s a reality competition television series that none of these contestants signed up for, and I am the sole judge.”
Through a Dance Moms-inspired pyramid, Vetrini spent ten weeks ranking the chefs on the meals they prepared and the videos they created. The chefs were also judged on typical reality TV drama, with less “Someone slept with someone’s boyfriend” and more “Someone got cooking oil on the pool deck.” Straying from reality TV attributes like Top Chef, where contestants are eliminated, the Hamptons private chefs are never actually disqualified. Followers continued to tune in weekly to check how the chefs were doing. Vetrini said over Zoom, “These chefs are doing so much work. I just wanted to curate it and give it a story.”
Vetrini was asked why these chefs make such good reality TV fodder. She said, “I did not anticipate it becoming a series. I was making a joke, and people were like, ‘Okay, we want more.’ I had been observing Meredith from Wishbone Kitchen for a couple of seasons. She was my entry into private cheffing in the Hamptons.” Vetrini continued, “She does such a good job narrating a day in the life, and her clients allow her to shoot so much footage of their home — you get not only the cooking content but also the interior-design content, the aspirational content. They bring in friends; they have parties.”
“It hits all of those pleasures for the eyes. You get beautiful houses, so you have the Nancy Meyers Coastal Grandmother content. You have the aspirational food content,” Vetrini said when asked what makes the chefs’ content so compelling. She continued, “And then you get gardening. So you have this cottagecore content where they have these beautiful gardens producing fruits and vegetables.”
When asked whether the series would continue next year, Vetrini stated, “I do think I’m gonna be doing it next season, and I’ll probably let go of some of the chefs who’ve already made it big and focus on the smaller chef creators. I just really want them to be celebrated and their work to be out there because they’re so talented.” Regardless of how long it takes, anticipation for Vetrini’s content continues to grow.
