Celebrity kitchens can be really cool.
Private NYC chef Julia Chebotar dished on cooking for the rich and famous — and the most “life-changing” amenity she’s seen in an A-lister’s home.
“Multiple ice machines with different shapes,” she told The Post this week.
“So you open one little one and they’re shaped like perfect circles. You open another little one and it’s like the shaved ice cubes. And they’re all spaced out throughout the house. I’m like, ‘This is the dream!’”
Chebotar, 36, one of 12 competing on NBC’s new series “Yes, Chef!,” which premieres on April 28, was employed by Ryan Seacrest — but she never used the swanky appliances in his actual kitchen since she never cooked in it.
“Ryan Seacrest had an entire different house for me to cook in, where someone would come and pick up the food and deliver it to him. A house on his property, but it wasn’t where he stayed.”
She also had to follow the “American Idol” host’s strict diet.
“That was really interesting because he ate according to his blood type. So I had to cook his food for his blood type, the girlfriend’s food for her blood type,” she said of the Blood Type Diet trend, which started in the ’90s.
“For example, someone with Type O might thrive on high-protein meats with lean meats and vegetables, while a Type A might do better with a more plant-forward menu … The vitamins that I had to pack for him daily in his little lunchbox was insane. The things that he eats to look that good … it makes a difference.”
Chebotar even has to sign NDAs in order to work for some notable names, like a certain famous Jennifer.
“The assistant was like, ‘Jennifer is really excited to meet you.’ And in my head, I was like, ‘I’m going to meet J.Lo.’ And it ended up being Jennifer Lawrence, which is still cool, but I was ready for J.Lo.”
Another of her celeb clients is actress Jenny Mollen, wife of “American Pie” star Jason Biggs, who lives in the West Village.
“Sometimes Jenny would just call me and be like, ‘Hey, Laz [her son] wants to make a cake. Can you come over?’”
After graduating from Temple University in 2011, Chebotar — who was born in the Ukraine, raised in Brooklyn and now lives on the Upper West Side — took over the kitchen of her stepfather’s East Village restaurant Organic Grill.
“I did that for about seven years until I gave myself shingles and I was like, ‘I never want to do this again.’”
Now, her bread and butter is serving as a private chef in Manhattan, where her clients have “some sort of dietary restriction or a busy schedule.”
“I have two little boys on the Upper East Side that I’ve cooked for for the past like six years and I make them dinner. I have a client on the Lower East Side three days a week that is allergic to raspberries, tomatoes, everything red,” she said.
“Last week, I cooked two back-to-back 30-person Passovers in the Hamptons.”
Her new favorite client is a 95-year-old woman on Central Park West who hosts dinner parties every other Tuesday.
“I basically create the menu, go shopping, prep everything, and then throw a dinner party for her and eight of her closest friends.”
She also gets paid to travel outside of the city — and recalled a memorable weeklong gig in Miami.
“Someone flew me down to work on their yacht. And all they wanted was rotisserie chicken pulled apart, doused in barbecue sauce, put on a tortilla and put on the George Foreman grill.”
The premise behind “Yes, Chef!” is that contestants are nominated because of their “big egos and hot tempers” and the winner — judged not only for their food, but their teamwork and how they improved their behavior — takes home a $250,000 grand prize.
Chebotar — who won Food Network’s competition series “Chopped” in 2020 — had her name submitted by her classmate at the National Gourmet Institute in Flatiron.
“It’s that I don’t work well with others. I’ve just been burned so many times by other chefs and their egos,” she said.
“I have been getting requests for larger events, and that’s when I do need to bring people in. So it’s hard letting that go.”
Chebotar marveled at how Martha Stewart, who hosts the show alongside Chef José Andrés, always looked “stunning” on set.
“I’ve never seen better hair or outfits on a woman who’s 83 years old. Every day we were like, ‘Martha brings it again.’”
She’s always aspired to emulate Stewart, who’s shown her that “a woman can really do anything.”
“Look at everything that she’s accomplished,” she gushed.
“I mean, the goal has always been to be Martha Stewart in any situation, minus the jail time.”
