The New York Chef Delusion (According to Black Rabbit)
I watched 1.3 episodes of Black Rabbit last night. That’s all I could manage. Not because of the crime plot — that actually had potential. It felt like it might go somewhere interesting: greed, gradual decline, the moment hope dies and people start doing insane things just to survive. I don’t know where it was heading, and now I’ll never know.
Because the show’s worldview was so delusional I couldn’t stomach it.
It’s one thing when a series satirises the egos of New York chefs.
It’s another when it takes them seriously — like we’re meant to accept their internal hierarchy of importance as gospel truth:
1. Chefs with a Michelin star
2. Chefs with a good New York Times write‑up
3. Chefs
4. God
5. Interior designers who do restaurant fit‑outs
6. Everyone else
And then came the moment I tapped out.
A $50 hamburger arrives — delivered on a plate with greaseproof paper underneath, served in a grungy pub under the Brooklyn Bridge off‑ramp — after a buildup that suggested this burger would transport your soul to the afterlife for a peak dining experience and return it safely to your body.
Presented like a canteen lunch.
Priced like a pilgrimage.
Treated like a sacred ritual performed by a secular priesthood.
I can handle darkness.
I can handle violence.
I can handle moral collapse.
What I can’t handle is a show that genuinely believes a Michelin‑starred chef is the apex of human civilisation.
That’s where I tap out.
About Jason Bresnehan
Jason writes in a modular, mind‑drift style that moves between business, recovery, faith, anthropology, and the oddities of everyday life without warning or apology. His work blends operator‑grade clarity with sideways narrative turns — the kind that start in a boardroom, drift through Scripture or Tasmanian riverbanks, and land in a piece of doctrine you didn’t see coming.
He has spent years helping organisations and people get unstuck, and his writing reflects the same instinct: take something messy, name it cleanly, and make it usable. His pieces — whether on addiction, Catholic symbolism, business operators, or human quirks — aren’t lectures. They’re field notes. Observations. Fragments designed for real people in real moments, including the tired executive delayed in an airport lounge at 11:45pm.
Jason publishes micro‑chapters as he writes them — standalone pieces that don’t follow a cadence or a theme. They accumulate over time into a larger body of work, shaped by curiosity, faith, operator discipline, and a refusal to perform — just get outcomes.
Founder of the Hadspen Foundation, Jason is committed to building frameworks for spiritual recovery that are both repeatable and personal. His writing is guided by discernment, narrative cadence, and the belief that doctrine should support—not overshadow—the human story.