3 dishes we’d want Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Captain Pike to cook for us

Star Trek is sometimes more than just space exploration and Captain Pike of Strange New Worlds has taught us that.

Each captain in the Star Trek canon has their “thing”. Kathryn Janeway loved her art and philosophical debates, James T. Kirk loved riding horses and camping, Benjamin Sisko was all about baseball, Jonathan Archer’s water polo, and Jean Luc-Picard had his screaming-about-The-Borg hobby. For Strange New Worlds’ Christopher Pike, it’s cooking.

One of the best parts of being in Starfleet is the advanced technology, and the endless ways life is made easy by it. Of all the items that Trek has invented, none is arguably more controversial and debatable than food replicators. The device is genuinely overpowered and a plot-line killer, which is why Voyager did all it could to destroy it and bring back a conventional kitchen and mess hall.

Strange New Worlds is also going back to a similar format, with Pike showing everyone his cooking skills on more than one occasion. It’s something he enjoys doing and it really does seem to bring people closer together than just getting reconstituted atoms that look like steak.

Pike’s love of cooking is one of our favorite things about him; he’ll do it anytime he can. Even when held hostage by Orion pirates. So Star Trek’s official Twitter account wanted to highlight Pike’s love of cooking and asked us what he’d like the Enterprise captain to cook.

Well, we have answers.

Rachel Carrington:

"I think I’d like an oyster omelet. It is a very popular dish in Taiwan and is even a popular street food item in Thailand. There are so many different variations on the dish so it sounds like something Captain Pike could have a lot of fun making. Of course, I don’t know how replicated oysters would taste!"

Michael Poteet

"I’d like Captain Pike to cook cherries jubilee. The cherries could be a reminder of California, his home state. A pirate ship would be sure to have the liqueur needed to set them alight — and Pike might find it therapeutic to be in control of a flaming liquid for change, after the Talosians’ “fable from childhood” torture of him in “The Cage”!"

Chad Porto

"The question Star Trek asked was based on a scene from the episode The Serene Squall, where it looks like the crew of the pirate ship is eating some sort of chili or gumbo. So I’d like to see what Pike can do with a chili dish. Gumbo if we can get a crossover with him and Joseph Sisko."