Spirit Plate is not just another cooking show centered on celebrity or competition. It’s centered on the ways food connects us to who we are and where we come from. It’s about the stories and relationships that emerge from the meals we share and the cultural knowledge passed on from generation to generation with every bite. Hosted by award-winning chef Pyet DeSpain, a citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and of Mexican heritage, Spirit Plate follows her travels across Native lands, gathering with elders, home cooks, and knowledge holders keeping culture alive through food. Every gathering, dish, and story is approached with the understanding that food holds the power to teach, heal, and reconnect us to ourselves and our cultures.
Pyet rose to national fame after winning Next Level Chef, but Spirit Plate shows a very different kind of kitchen. There are no judges or time limits here. Instead, there’s time to breathe, to talk, and to cook with purpose. Pyet grounds every scene with respect and intention; she isn’t there to be a “celebrity” cook but to listen, learn, and build community.
In Cooking for the Powwow of a Lifetime, the first episode of Spirit Plate, chef Pyet DeSpain returns to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation for what feels like a homecoming wrapped in ceremony and flavor. She visits the tribe’s bison ranch, learning from bison wrangler Randy Poole how the animals are raised to supply the local casino and feed elders and families. The camera follows her through the pastures, where the bison’s power and grace mirror the resilience of her own people. Pyet reflects on how, in the 1800s, the U.S. Army nearly wiped out the species to starve tribes, and how bringing them back is not only an act of survival, but also of sovereignty. With fifty pounds of donated bison meat, she begins preparing a feast to raise funds for the Boys and Girls Club during the tribe’s largest powwow of the year.
Back in the kitchen with her family, Pyet prepares a traditional bison and wild-rice stew for 150 people. Her mother and grandfather join in, turning the cooking into an act of remembrance. She seasons the bison carefully—low and slow—while sharing stories of her mother’s strength and the reconnection that brought their family back to the reservation after generations apart. After simmering for four hours, the stew is finally served. The community gathers to eat, laugh, and give thanks for their community and survival. As Pyet watches her family among the crowd, she speaks about finding her direction again through food and community. She shares how she realized that every pot she stirs connects her back to her people and the land that sustains them.
Preparing a 400-pound pig in an underground oven is at the heart of Spirit Plate’s second episode, set in Hawaii, where Pyet DeSpain joins chef Kealoha Domingo and his family for a cooking process rooted in tradition, respect, and a deep connection to the land. The episode begins with the taro fields and lessons on kalo as ancestral kin before shifting to the responsibility that comes with taking a life for food. Kealoha’s son steps into a coming-of-age moment as he carries out the harvest, surrounded by a family that guides him with patience and cultural grounding. Pyet watches with emotion, recognizing the weight of what she’s witnessing and the care woven into each step. From scraping and cleaning the pig to honoring the animal through touch, story, and craft, the process unfolds as a collective act where elders teach, younger men learn, and tradition lives in every motion.
Building the imu, the underground oven, is its own ceremony. Hot stones from the mountains line the pit, banana stumps and leaves create layers of moisture and flavor, and bundles of breadfruit and tea leaves fill the gaps. The family works quickly to seal the pit before the heat escapes. As the pig cooks for nine hours, Pyet prepares her own dish with wild Hawaiian venison and Mexican chayote, bringing her heritage to the shared table. When the imu is finally opened, caramelized skin and falling-apart pork emerge in a burst of color and steam, greeted with excitement from everyone who helped build it because the meal marks a milestone in Kealoha’s son’s life. It’s a coming-of-age moment that honors the land that provided the food and brings the community together through a practice that blends the past and the present, taught hand-to-hand across generations.
What makes Spirit Plate worth watching isn’t just the beauty of the food or the landscapes. It’s the way Pyet shifts the rhythm of what food television can be. The show resists the overly polished, fast-paced style of mainstream cooking shows. Instead, it breathes and makes space for the sounds of cooking and conversation filled with laughter and even silence. Pyet moves through the space with humility, letting the community’s voices take the lead. You watch her taking in every lesson, recognizing the kinship between Indigenous peoples even across oceans. You feel the weight of what it means to feed a community, to honor and preserve story and culture through flavor.
Watching Spirit Plate reminds us that Indigenous foodways are not a trend to be rediscovered, but living traditions that continue to shape and sustain our communities every day. Pyet DeSpain gives those traditions room to shine and shows how cooking can carry memory, healing, and love across generations. Spirit Plate creates a space where Indigenous stories and flavors belong, entirely and without apology.
Pyet’s upcoming cookbook, Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking, promises to expand on the ideas woven throughout the series. Rooted in Fire is set to be released on November 18, 2025 and gathers more than sixty recipes that showcase how her blended heritage is rooted in the same spirit of storytelling and care. She describes it as a reflection of the fire that sustains us, the creative energy that keeps cultures alive even through hardship.
To bring that spirit directly to communities, Pyet is also taking Rooted in Fire on the road with a series of cooking demos, book events, and conversation. From Smorgasburg LA to Kansas City, she’s demonstrating that food media can and should belong to everyone, that it can be relatable, grounded, and rooted in genuine connection.
Together, Spirit Plate and Rooted in Fire form a continuum of storytelling grounded in Indigenous presence and food. They invite you to sit at the table with land, language, people, and history, not as an outside observer, but as someone willing to walk in relation. And that is precisely why Spirit Plate and Rooted in Fire deserve your attention.
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