In 'Chrissy & Dave Dine Out,' Los Angeles and its restaurant scene get the spotlight

Chrissy Teigen and David Chang I wasn't supposed to do “Chrissy and Dave go out to dinner.” Not quite.

The pair had briefly teamed up for an episode of the 2019 Netflix docuseries. “Breakfast lunch dinner,” where they traveled to Morocco and dug up lambs from the earth. But Chang, chef and founder of Momofuku, and Teigen, the supermodel-turned-TV personality and cookbook author, wanted to work on something more substantial and not necessarily travel-based. About five years ago, the concept seemed to be taking shape and it was announced that the pair would collaborate on a vaguely titled cooking show. “Family style.”

Teigen and Chang had planned to shoot the series in a studio. But the start of filming coincided with the first week of the closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They ended up taking a three-year break, which gave the couple a chance to rethink their run.

“We were able to pause and constantly repeat the show,” Chang, 46, says over Zoom from his Majordomo Media Studios in Los Angeles. That also meant recruiting the comedian Joel Kim Booster for your culinary journey. “It was worth stopping production for three years,” Chang says of Booster.

What they realized was that they like to get “dirty” and “needed to get out,” says Teigen, 38, speaking over Zoom from her cloud-shaped bed in Los Angeles. The twist allowed the show's stars to “take the show to restaurants and highlight a lot of the restaurants that people may not know about,” Chang says. So that's what they did.

The result is the new Freeform series “Chrissy & Dave Dine Out,” where the duo hits the Los Angeles restaurant scene to host entertaining dinner parties with their famous friends and family, including Jimmy Kimmel, Kumail Najiani, Regina Hall, Simu Liu and more. The series premieres Wednesday and will stream on Hulu the next day.

The collaboration has been a long time coming. Teigen and Chang met almost 20 years ago when her and her now-husband John Legend They lived in the East Village of New York. “This was before John became John and Chrissy became Chrissy,” Chang says.

Chang's famous Momofuku Noodle Bar was a short distance from Legend's apartment. Teigen says she was drawn to the open kitchen and new flavors, and the couple frequented it up to three times a week. At the time, Teigen was new to the culinary arts, but she dove into Chang's 2009 cookbook, “Momofuku,” and often crafted recipes like chicken wings and pork belly lettuce cups with Legend. .

“If we weren't at Momofuku, we'd be cooking by the rules,” he says. It wasn't long before she became friends with the chef, who helped her while she immersed herself in the kitchen.

“I really started to respect him from the beginning,” he says of Chang. “But then watching him become an entrepreneur, selling products, appearing on television and then becoming a dad… I loved him from the beginning.”

Chang gushes over the praise: “She's very kind to me, very kind.”

Beyond their culinary passion, they have become closer as their families have grown. Chang says that when his wife Grace Seo Chang became pregnant, she transformed their dynamic in a way that he “did not anticipate or expect. “Chrissy and John are always there,” he says.

Their bond is the backbone of the series. While Chang gets his hands dirty at restaurants like The Mexican House and White Pizzeria – getting acquainted with the culinary masterminds behind L.A. hotspots – Teigen leads the conversation at the front of the room with Booster and the celebrity guests.

Chrissy Teigen leads the conversation with Joel Kim Booster and celebrity guests on “Chrissy & Dave Dine Out.”

(Mike Taing/Disney)

The timing also worked because Teigen was eight months pregnant while filming. “She was so hungry and so ready for every place we went, and it opened the world to me,” she says.

Most of the spaces Chang selected were new to Teigen and Booster, allowing them to explore Los Angeles' food culture like never before. But the effort required them to pull from a giant list which restaurants they would include in the series. For them it was essential to show the different corners of the city and the diversity of the cuisine. And they needed to select a fine dining restaurant. They choose Providence by Chef Michael Cimarustiwhich Chang insists is “probably the best restaurant in all of Los Angeles and, in my opinion, one of the best restaurants in America.”

The show also allowed Chang to immerse himself in Korean culture, particularly with the anime Yangbanrun by married chefs Katianna and John Hong.

“I was excited for people to see that being Korean-American is not just this monoculture of being Korean-American,” she says. “I was excited to show a different perspective of what Korean food could be.”

Both Teigen and Chang tread carefully when talking about the restaurant industry. They have understood how challenging the business is. Chang's Momofuku empire has seen a wave of closures since 2020. “We're opening restaurants and we're just doing it a little differently than before, in a way that's more sustainable,” he says of the changes.

In “Chrissy & Dave Dine Out,” David Chang meets with chefs from several Los Angeles restaurants that viewers may not know about.

(Mike Taing/Disney)

When asked if there are overrated restaurants in Los Angeles, Teigen answers broadly. “It bothers me a little, let's say, the popularity of some restaurants when others are much better. That gets me. But damn, if I ever talk about a restaurant,” she laughs. To be fair, Teigen says he once told a restaurant owner that his restaurant was overrated without knowing who he was. “It was a learning experience for me,” he says, laughing. A minute later, he's sporting red spots on his neckline. “Look at my hives,” he says, moving closer to the camera. “Just asking an underrated restaurant.”

While the focus on dishes like pumpkin pies, caviar, and doro wat and the chefs behind them is compelling, so is the unfiltered conversation with famous friends, led by Teigen. However, she insists that she doesn't have many famous friends, but that she, she says, is Chang who does.

“Every time they pitch me a show, I'm like, 'Okay, Chrissy, it's you and all your famous friends,' and I'm like, 'I don't know who you're talking about.' They don't exist,'” she says.

You wouldn't know it from watching the series, as apparently no topic is off-limits. Teigen didn't expect the conversations to get as risky as they sometimes do.

“But then I remembered the vibe of 'Watch what happens live'” she says. “You tend to say more when you feel like you're in a good, safe space and at times you forget that this is going to happen to everyone around the world.”

At the table, Teigen jokes that people once thought she was a beard to her husband. She is Kimmel's wife, writer and producer. Molly McNearney, remembers seeing her parents having sex four times when she was a child, and she and Kimmel recall their first sexual experience. Booster and Liu talk about their years of being pigeonholed by casting directors because of their race. And at one point in the series, Teigen admits that she was “criticized” during an appearance on “Celebrity Family Feud,” where she played against the cast of “Vanderpump Rules” and I didn't remember anything.

Teigen has been candid about ditching alcohol and publicly celebrating one year of sobriety in July 2022. On Instagram. She was sober for a year, during which time she became pregnant and remained sober.

But he says he got to a point where he wanted to be the kind of person who could have a drink once in a while. He had regular sessions with his therapist and addiction specialist to discuss it. He tried, but quickly realized that he “can't be that person.”

“In the last 15 years, I've never had a drink where I didn't immediately say, 'I wish I hadn't done this,'” he says. Teigen initially calls it her “slip trip,” but immediately clarifies the phrase given how much he consulted with professionals about it before and during the experience: “Alcohol to me is just a physical poison. “It doesn't sit well with me.” Now, with four children, he says he “can't afford to have a hangover.” “I'll say,” he pauses. “Now I only have a good half gummy left.”

Should “Chrissy & Dave Dine Out” get a second season, Chang and Teigen already have some ideas for special guests in mind. There is a long list of names: oprah, lauren sanchez, Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy and Rihanna.

“We'll just shoot for the stars here,” he says.