No Kitchen Required for Michael Psilakis

If you’ve ever wanted to see chef Michael Psilakis dig up yams with a machete, tune in to BBC America at 10 p.m. for the premiere of “No Kitchen Required.”

This new reality cooking show is a nutty mashup of “Survivor” and “Chopped.” In each episode, three chefs travel to some remote wilderness where they meet whatever aboriginal tribe lives there. After dining on the local specialties, the chefs must compete to catch wild animals, forage for, um, side dishes and prepare a meal in a very primitive kitchen — a flame, a knife, a pot and perhaps a few hollowed-outs gourds. The meals are then judged by a panel of tribal elders. (Not a Gail Simmons in sight.)

Long Island native Psilakis, who owns MP Taverna in Roslyn as well as Kefi and Fish Tag in Manhattan, is the most prominent chef. The other two are “Chopped Champion” Madison Cowan and Kayne Raymond, an “elite personal chef from New Zealand,” whose clients include the CEO of Oracle.

For the first challenge, the chefs travel to the Caribbean Island of Dominica and meet the indigenous Kalinago people whose cuisine is based on root vegetables and such wild game as manicou (opossum) and crayfish. Each chef brings with him one ingredient. Psilakis, not surprisingly, brings good Greek olive oil. But other than that, he’s cooking Kalinago. The judging scene — where the saronged and headdressed elders tell the chefs that this dish needs more salt, that one is too bitter — is priceless.

Michael Psilakis searches for yams on a mountainside in Dominica.