Q&A with Pig Beach BBQ pitmaster set to get grilled on Food Network’s ‘Beat Bobby Flay’

Matt Abdo will fight fire with fire. Literally.

The Pig Beach BBQ co-owner and pitmaster will barbecue-battle on a special themed episode of “Beat Bobby Flay” set to air at 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29.

The Food Network cooking competition has two chefs face off against each other in a first round, preparing a dish with a specific ingredient in just 20 minutes. Two guest hosts then determine which contestant proceeds to a 45-minute kitchen-off against celebrity chef Bobby Flay himself. The winner of the second round is chosen by three guest judges in a blind taste-test.

Abdoo will be going grill-to-grill against Chicago’s Dominique Leach, who has appeared on “Fire Masters,” “BBQ Brawl” and “Chopped.”

But Abdoo ain’t no slouch when it comes to TV either.

The chef — who lives in Palm Beach Gardens with his wife and two children — is a regular on NBC’s “Today” show and has appeared on other Food Network shows such as “The Kitchen,” “Battle of the Brothers,” “Worst Cooks in America,” “Throwdown With Michael Symon” and “Kitchen Crash.” He was a judge on “Beat Bobby Flay” six times.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” Abdoo says. “I became very good friends with the ‘Today’ show people when I did my first segment in 2014 and they did have me on quite regularly ever since, which is like a dream come true.”

That extensive television experience allows him to be relaxed on the air.

“Since I’ve been on camera a bunch of times before, I wasn’t as nervous with the filming aspect of things, but your blood pressure’s high, you’re sweating,” he says. “The person I was competing against, Dominique Leach, she’s also an incredibly acclaimed pitmaster herself. She won ‘BBQ Brawl’ the season before, so she was very familiar with TV as well. But, for sure, not letting the camera be a distraction is definitely a leg up.”

Pig Beach BBQ has locations in West Palm Beach, Boston and Queens, New York, in a business partnership between Abdoo, Rob Shawger and Shane McBride. All three restaurants will host watch parties on Thursday for the special episode, titled “The Thrill of the Grill,” which was actually taped back in January 2024.

Here is more about Abdoo and the special “Beat Bobby Flay” episode from an interview that’s been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Since you’ve been on “Beat Bobby Flay” before as a judge, what do you really want us to know about the competition?

A: The show’s legit. Like being a judge … you have absolutely no idea whose dish is whose. You can sometimes try to guess and, every time you try to guess, you’re usually wrong. At least that’s been my take on it. And the show’s legit in the sense that when that bell rings for 20 minutes, you have exactly 20 minutes in round one. And that bell rings in round two … boom, you have 45 minutes. There’s no cutting, there’s no stopping, there’s no repositioning, it’s all live feed. Any edits they do are edits in post-production like cutting between cameras back and forth. So it’s pretty spectacular how they film the whole thing.

Q: Does this all take place in one day?

A: Yes. So this is why Bobby is a super human. He films two episodes a day. … I was exhausted by the end of this episode, and he had already done one and it was the end of his second one. And he’s just still cool, calm, collected  — not even sweating — just, you know, doing his thing.

Q: Without any spoilers, what “Beat Bobby Flay” insider info can you share with loyal viewers?

A: What’s also really cool is that you don’t really get to see how detailed the kitchen is on camera. I mean sometimes you get little snippets when the chefs are running to the pantry or to the refrigerators, but it’s awesome. … They have everything you could possibly think of. It’s amazing. It’s the perfect dry storage for any restaurant wanting to do any cuisine ever. It’s amazing what they have.

Q: You’ve judged “Beat Bobby Flay” before, but this was your first time competing. Did you have a plan in place for this “The Thrill of the Grill” episode?

A: On my plane trip up and in the hotel room the night before, I binge-watched probably 20 episodes just to kind of get my strategy together, to see what wins. The takeaway was: The more complicated you get in round one, the more often you lose, because people get bogged down with timing, trying to do things that were too complicated or too time-consuming. So I went into it with the strategy of just keep it simple, trust in my training, do the things that I know work well.

Q: I hear you know the hosts of this episode — chef Josh Capon and the “Today” show’s Dylan Dreyer — so how did that make you feel when you strode onto that set and saw them, especially since they judged the first round?

A: One of the things that put me at ease (and simultaneously) made me super nervous was I know both of them very well. You know they’re going to be completely objective, no matter what. And I was just like, “Oh God, I can’t let chef Capon down.” I mean Josh Capon is a chef that I looked up to my entire time when I was in New York City. He’s a super acclaimed, incredibly talented chef. …  And Dylan’s an amazing chef herself. She goes home and she cooks all the time for her three boys. One of her boys is gluten-free, so she’s always whipping up these amazing gluten-free recipes.

Q: What would you like for Bobby Flay fans to know about him?

A: He is better than you think he is, in all the right ways. Bobby Flay is one of the quintessential chefs of my time, right? I grew up watching him on “Boy Meets Grill.” He’s arguably one of the most successful chefs of a generation. The guy basically created maybe half the content that’s on the Food Network with this production company. Yet every time I’ve been with him … he’s always been exceptionally cordial, kind and friendly. It’s always like, “What’s up chef? What’s going on? How’s Pig Beach?”

Q: What can you tell us about your watch party at Pig Beach BBQ?

A: The show airs at 9 p.m., so we’re telling people to get here around 8:30 so you can get situated, grab a table, grab a drink. We’re going to be serving a dish that was part of the show that night. I can’t say what the dish is … but people can get a taste of something that I cooked while they’re watching the video, which will be a lot of fun. We’re doing that at all three of our locations, West Palm Beach; Astoria, Queens; and in Boston. And we’re going to be running that dish … basically for the whole month of February. So if you miss it that day, come on in. There’ll only be a limited amount of them made every single day, so first-come, first-served.”

The South Florida location of Pig Beach BBQ is at 2400 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach. Visit pigbeachnyc.com or call 561-803-0333.

The “Beat Bobby Flay” episode titled “The Thrill of the Grill” will air at 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, on the Food Network. Visit foodnetwork.com/shows/beat-bobby-flay.