Brooklyn Beckham’s cooking show has a problem: He doesn’t know how
Brooklyn Beckham, the 22-year-old son of soccer hero David and Spice Girl turned fashion designer Victoria, has said that he dreams of being a “great chef.”
But he’s jumped over the actual task of learning to cook and gone straight for the spotlight.
According to insiders familiar with his social-media series, “Cookin’ With Brooklyn,” it took a team of 62 professionals to help him demonstrate how to make a sandwich — including a “culinary producer” who approves the recipes, five camera operators and nine producers.
“It’s unheard of,” a senior TV executive told The Post. “It’s the sort of crewing you would expect on a big TV show.”
There’s also a big TV budget: Insiders say each episode of the show, which airs on Facebook Messenger and Instagram (where Brooklyn has 13.1 million followers), costs $100,000.
The sandwich Brooklyn “makes” is a take on traditional British fish and chips, updated by putting sea bream topped with a hash brown and coleslaw into a bagel.
Brooklyn, however, does not make or cook a single element of the sandwich. He only spreads aioli mayonnaise on the bagel and lays the ingredients made by others on top. He doesn’t know how to batter or fry a piece of fish. He has no idea how long it might take to fry a hash brown.
Without irony he tells the camera, “With sandwiches, you can go so many different ways. It really does help to be creative.”
One source sniffed to The Post: “He is to cooking what [his mother] Posh was to singing.
“Apparently the guy has to be shown really super basic things and has a ‘cheat sheet’ of expressions from whisk to par-boil, several illustrated with pictures.”
His famous family, particularly his father, are mentioned in every single episode. “I came here with my dad when I was 13,” he tells Nobu sushi chef and restaurateur Nobu Matsuhisha.
“Everything he does is directed by his parents,” said a family source. “Victoria pulled strings for him in fashion photography at first. Now, with cooking, he has Gordon Ramsay as a family friend. Gordon advised to them to put as much money into it as they could.”
The show is produced by influencer content company Wheelhouse DNA and bears a copyright for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
This is Brooklyn’s third attempt at a career. As a teen, he hoped to become a professional footballer like his father, but was dropped by London club Arsenal at 15. He took photography and media studies at a private London college and was accepted to study photography at the Parsons School in New York, but felt homesick and dropped out after less than a year.
In 2017 he released “What I See,” a book of 300 “personal” photographs, including Victoria petting an elephant and David’s stick-figure tattoo.
After seeing Brooklyn’s recent appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” British TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson wrote in the Sun: “My thoughts go to friends and colleagues in the hospitality business who are trained chefs and deserved to have a place at the Corden table, rather than rookie Brooklyn. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had the same thoughts of nepotism and unfair advantage. It’s little wonder this kind of display engenders jealousy and frustration.”
This came after controversy last October when he appeared on the “Today” show” and assembled a bacon, egg and sausage sandwich. Everything apart from the egg was pre-prepared.
British TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, who is famously nice, said on air: “I thought at first this was a spoof, but it’s not. He looked all embarrassed, the wee soul. He’s coming in here tomorrow to make beans on toast. Bonkers!”
During lockdown, Brooklyn has said, he became seriously interested in food and started to post social-media videos of himself making food at the $10.5 million Los Angeles home he shares with his fiancée, “Bates Motel” actress Nicola Peltz.
The couple are to marry on April 9. Beckham’s mom, Victoria, has invited all of her former Spice Girls bandmates to the affair, which will be held at the Florida mansion of Peltz’s billionaire businessman father.
It’s unlikely Brooklyn will be in charge of the catering, judging by his attempt on the show at frying sushi rice parcels. They are meant to be fluffy in the middle but come out “so crispy” that they “could be used as cereal.”
But at least he has a set of sushi knives, engraved with his initials, costing over $1,000.
Up next? Brooklyn is said to have a line of hot sauce in the works. Just call him Nepotism Spice.
