Last Meals Live with Mythical Chef Josh, Tefi Pessoa, Keith Lee, and Elyse Myers
Summary
Last Meals Live is an interactive live taping of the hit food-interview series from the Good Mythical Morning team, hosted by Mythical Chef Josh at SXSW 2026. The premise: guests reveal what they would eat as their ideal last meal — covering drinks, appetizers, entrée, and dessert — and the audience votes on the winner. Featured guests are Tefi Pessoa (media personality, podcast host, Rolling Stone and Time top creator), Keith Lee (TikTok creator of the year, Forbes 30 Under 30, known for values-driven restaurant reviews), and Elyse Myers (comedian, author, Instagram's first-ever Rings Award recipient, 12 million followers).
The session opens as an audience-participation game show, with each guest presenting their dream last meal course by course. Tefi chooses a dry white wine and a filthy blue-cheese-stuffed olive martini, shrimp cocktail with pretzel bread, a ribeye medium rare with broccolini and mashed potatoes, and Junior's New York cheesecake. Keith selects a blueberry lavender lemonade, blue-fin tuna nigiri with rosemary truffle fries, a medium-rare ribeye with truffle butter, and fresh chocolate chip cookies made by his private chef with Blue Bell vanilla bean ice cream. Elyse opts for Kettle One vodka soda, yellowtail hamachi and spicy tuna crispy rice, a solo bone-out ribeye, and Dip n' Dots banana split flavor — chosen because as a child she could only afford two cups on school field trips and now finally has "adult money" to buy them freely.
Beneath the playful food conversation, the session opens into genuinely moving territory. Host Josh frames the show's thesis: there is no such thing as "I just like it" — every food has a deeper emotional story. Elyse's sushi memory is tied to the first time her older brother, newly flush with adult money, took her for a $400 blowout meal in La Jolla. Tefi's ribeye is the meal she had in New York after making a full year in the city, proving her least-favorite aunt wrong after the aunt told her she'd never last six months. Keith's comfort-food choices reflect a profound life transition: for his entire athletic career as a wrestler and MMA fighter, he had to constantly cut weight and could not freely eat. Two years ago was the first Thanksgiving he could eat without worrying about a weigh-in.
The session's most powerful moment comes when Josh asks the panel about near-death experiences. Keith discloses — publicly for only the second time — that he attempted suicide at 17 during a severe argument with his father, and only survived because his father came back and held him. Elyse shares that she has experienced multiple seasons where she questioned whether it was better to be alive or not. Josh then reveals that he launched Last Meals partly because his mother had schizophrenia and died by suicide, and his father died when he was 19 — meaning his own life has been "shrouded in grief, death, and heartache," and food is one of the things that cuts through that. The audience responds with extended applause. The session closes with the audience voting Keith Lee's meal the winner, and Josh's private chef actually delivering cookies to Keith on stage. Keith, who notes he should have been on a flight 30 minutes prior, says the experience was absolutely worth it.
Key Takeaways
- •The show's core thesis, as articulated by host Josh, is that there is no such thing as 'I just like it' when it comes to food — every food preference has a deeper emotional or biographical story underneath it.
- •Keith Lee disclosed publicly for only the second time ever that he attempted suicide at age 17 after a severe argument with his father, and was saved when his father returned and expressed love he had never shown before in that way.
- •Keith Lee spent his entire wrestling and MMA career unable to freely eat due to weight-cutting requirements; two years ago was his first Thanksgiving where he could eat without worrying about a weigh-in — which directly led to his love of food and his TikTok review career.
- •Host Josh revealed that he launched Last Meals because his mother had schizophrenia and took her own life, and his father died when Josh was 19 — the show is rooted in his own lifelong relationship with grief, death, and the comfort of food.
- •Elyse Myers shared that she has experienced multiple seasons of questioning whether it was better to be alive or not, framing mental health struggles as something she wanted to discuss carefully to avoid giving visual imagery that could harm vulnerable viewers.
- •Tefi Pessoa's ribeye and New York meal is tied directly to a specific milestone: she ordered it on the first meal she paid for herself in New York, after moving there and proving wrong a family member who told her she would not last six months. As of this session she has been in New York for 14 years.
- •Elyse's Dip n' Dots choice — ice cream of the future — traces back to childhood school field trips to Knott's Berry Farm where she only had $15 for the whole day, and would strategically ration two cups of Dip n' Dots while skipping lunch so no one would ask if she had money.
- •Keith Lee grew up in Detroit in a culturally segregated environment and did not know that people actually lived in Las Vegas or California — he first discovered sushi when he moved to Vegas for his fighting career and initially thought it was 'a movie thing.'
Transcript
Sweet Life on Deck. What a show that was. Uh, but we have had a a tremendous privilege in being able to ask all these celebrities what their last meal would be and cook and eat it with them. Ask them all types of questions about life, death, legacy, all the things in between. So, today what we are going to do, I have three incredible guests. You all know them. Who's uh shout your favorite guest we have on stage on three. One, two, three. >> I know Elise Myers is great, isn't she? Uh, we have thr...
