Debuting in 2024 on Dropout, Gastronauts was a silly answer to the often-intense world of cooking shows. Joran Myrick loves food of all types, and wanted to give some of America’s best chefs a goofy challenge — courtesy of a deep roster of Dropout mainstays. Now, Jordan is returning for an expanded season 2 with a larger episode count and a greater number of wild meal ideas.

During an interview with TVBrittanyF ahead of Gastronauts‘ season 2 release on August 15th, Jordan Myrick reflected on the most never-wracking challenges of the new batch of episodes, what separates the Dropout series from other cooking shows, and how important it for Gastronauts to reflect the joy in food.

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TVBF: I wanted to lead by saying I watched the premiere with my wife and her family from the Midwest — they felt both seen and slightly insulted by the “white people food.”

Jordan Myrick: Yes, I think it’s gonna be hopefully controversial in the best way possible. I will say, I knew that all the chefs would make everything taste good. So I thought, what’s the big deal if this challenge is disrespectful? [Laughter].I think that’s good, but I still think we’ll get a great result. So let’s do it.

How do you find the rhythm of the challenges in these episodes?

This season, I’m also showrunning [Gastronauts], which is exciting. I’m working even more closely with everything behind the scenes. Part of what everyone does when they sign up for Gastronauts is send in a handful of pitches of what their challenge might be, what they would like for them to be. Some people are excited to send challenges, and they’re like, ‘I love food. I watch all these cooking shows. Here are 13 challenges.’

Some people are like, ‘I don’t know anything about food. Here are three challenges. I hope these are good enough.’ Sometimes we’ll do a little bump up. Sometimes we’ll have to do a bump down. Sometimes we’ll be like, ‘This challenge is fun. It would require a helicopter, so we can’t do it in the space that we have.’ We have to figure out another way to do that. We work with them. It’s a really collaborative process.

One of my favorite elements of the show is how there’s no sense of judgment against the cooks and their creations, which lends the actual cooking scenes a friendly Great British Bake-Off comfiness.

I should say, I think a lot of times the harshest criticism comes from me or the chefs to the judges. Just kind of putting them in their place. I think that’s necessary. We have to remind them that most of them don’t know a lot about food, and sometimes their ideas are bad or weird, and I think they should be ashamed [Laughter].

I think we try to remember that first and foremost, this is a comedy show. Everyone’s here to have a good time. I think food can be so pretentious in a lot of ways. To me, personally and in my life, food has always been fun. Food has always been a point of connection. It has never been this pretentious or alienating thing. I want to bring that same energy to the show.

We interviewed all the chefs. That’s something we didn’t do first season. First season, we did a lot more casting just off of resumes and recommendations and things like that. It turned out really well. Because we had to cast so many more chefs because there are more episodes this season, we actually interviewed everyone to get a taste of their personality. I think it was pretty easy to get a feel for people who seemed fun and nice.

When you let people know they’re not winning money, and that none of this really matters, it’s just fun… this is a friendly environment. I think [the chefs] feel that throughout. Our hair and makeup team is so wonderful and welcoming. They talk to Morgan, our director, who’s super nice. You just get tastes of niceness everywhere.

I think it really influences the way you act, versus going on another show where they put you in an empty room and you kind of get in your head and start thinking about what you’re doing, and you’re playing for $50,000 for your college fund for your child or whatever. The stakes are much higher! So I get it being more intense. I think we’ve created a fun atmosphere. How serious can you be when you’re making a Flintstone car out of lamb chops?

Which kinds of challenges get you the most excited — and which have you the most worried?

This sounds very logical, but it’s still worth saying — the challenges where I think the food is going to be less delicious are less exciting to me. Challenges that sound more delicious, I’m more excited for. I was very worried about Katie’s challenge [of a bland meal]. I did believe that the chefs would do a good job no matter what, but we really spent a lot of time, the producers and the culinary team and I, being like, ‘How do we describe this challenge? ‘

How do you make it bland, make it flavorless, make it very white culture? But also, do I really want to eat food with absolutely no flavor? No, of course not. The challenge was, how do we get the instructions across while still getting a good product? Things like that can be a little nerve-racking, but still end up being fun.

There were some challenges I think are so open, I can feel a little nervous about. For example, this season, Kimia wants something that is as tall as she is. Those can make me a little nervous, too, because there are no food rules with that! They could really serve me anything! I didn’t know what to expect. That can be a little nerve-racking, versus something like the gooeyest chocolate chip cookie challenge from Raph. I’m like, no matter what it is, I’m gonna eat something that probably tastes pretty good.

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How do you pick out the judge line-ups?

A big thing we think about is diversity in terms of the actual dishes they’re looking for. We don’t want three judges who all want things that have to do with the visual aesthetic of a dish. We want the challenges to feel diverse, so each episode is exciting. There’s also the non-fun technical aspect, which is people scheduling. Sometimes, you have people that just make sense together, like Katie, Raph, and Tao, or Siobhan and Emily and Ally. Some people just slot in perfectly together, and that’s what makes the most sense.

But sometimes you end up getting these weird combos of people where it’s like, oh, I don’t think these three people know each other, but their challenges are really different, they fit together in a nice way. And they’re all available on Thursday! So let’s try it out and see how it goes. I think those episodes sometimes could be the most exciting to shoot, because we have no idea what people are going to say or do or how they’re going to interact with each other. It’s full of a lot of surprises, which really breeds comedy.

How has season 2 differed from the first batch of episodes?

You know, I wouldn’t necessarily say it has differed heavily, outside of being more work. I think that season one was so great and wonderful, I kind of just wanted to turn up the volume on season two, both on camera and behind the camera. Before Season 1, Dropout had never done a food thing. We were really getting our footing. We had never been in that space before. A lot of people behind the scenes had never worked with Dropout before at all, or had worked on different types of projects.

It was great. It was like a documentary filmmaker who works on the show. It’s a wide range of people with all different types of incredible experiences. So I think this season, we were so much more at home with what we were doing, so we were able to kind of amp up elements. Season 1, we were like, okay, lighting. The lights are on. It looks good, perfect. Let’s on to the next thing. This time, everyone in their individual department got to have a little bit more fun with what they were doing and be a little bit more individually creative.

If you had to pick one meal you’ve had on Gastronauts to be a constant in your life, which would it be?

Gosh, it’s all such a wash in my head right now because I’m doing edits. Whatever I just edited is the first thing on my mind. I’ve had so many wonderful dishes. Honestly, every dish last year was great from season one. One thing that really stands out to me was the tuna crudo dish from Lily Du’s dry challenge, which I just thought — that challenge was so nasty to me, and the way Lily eats is so nasty in general [Laughter]. I see her eat multiple times a week, and I just don’t like it at all.

So I was like, this is not going to be good. But Kat Turner did such a wonderful job of actually making the dish, both dry and tuna, but also something so delicious that I actually wanted it. I would say that I had a couple of bites this season that were maybe some of the best things I’ve ever had in my life. It’s hard! One of the Try Guys said that one of the things he ate would be his death row meal. I’m hard-pressed to find bad food on this show.

Gastronauts is now streaming on Dropout