A calmer Jeff Lewis . . . Aiee! Onions!

Dressed T-shirt and baseball cap casual and sitting papel picado-adjacent in a red vinyl booth at Mexico City, the Los Feliz culinary institution, Jeff Lewis -- multimillion-dollar real estate investor, obsessive-compulsive freak, frequenter of pet psychics and shamanistic healers as well as star of Bravo’s cult favorite reality series “Flipping Out,” tried to stay focused.

Flanked as usual by his bubbly executive assistant, Jenni Pulos, Lewis was ostensibly deconstructing a project he took on that was shown on “Flipping Out,” in which he was attempting to restore a historic mansion for a particularly trying Hancock Park resident. Deeper issues suddenly surfaced. “No coincidences that I’ve worked for someone now who’s more difficult, more demanding and more abusive than I am. You think that’s a coincidence or was I looking in the mirror and realizing, ‘Oh, my God, that’s me? Wait, is there chicken in here?’ ” he said, his attention hijacked by an impending burrito crisis.

“Her trust issues were . . . so frustrating for us and me personally,” Pulos said. “Because I was scheduling these people out for bids and Jeff and I got to the point where we . . . . What’s wrong?”

“This is not what I ordered. There are onions and tomatoes in here. I said it over and over; I said beans, rice, chicken and cheese. And I’m seeing the chicken . . . wait, hold on . . . there’s onions and tomatoes . . . ,” he said, his fork deep in archaeological excavation.

“OK, we found out, you don’t have to keep playing with it,” Pulos said. Grabbing his plate, she marched off to accost the proper authorities.

Lewis, it appeared, was flipping out.

It might seem that misplaced onions are just about the worst thing that could happen to Lewis. But halfway through Season 2 of this recent entrant into lifestyles of the unscripted and wealthy, viewers have seen that things among “Flipping Out’s” dysfunctional household (including numerous assistants, a sarcastic Nicaraguan maid, his ex-boyfriend/current business partner, two Himalayan house cats and three rescued dogs) have taken a dark turn. Convinced someone in his employ is seriously slacking, Lewis installed a nanny cam in his office.

Taping finished at the beginning of June, and four episodes have already aired. On Tuesday’s show, house manager Chris Elwood, who has held various positions -- from trash guy to house assistant, back to trash guy, up to house manager -- in Lewis Corp. for years, just inadvertently outed himself as the serial time-waster, flitting back and forth between Facebook and rummaging through Lewis’ personal artifacts. In this week’s episode, Elwood’s wife -- none other than the erstwhile Jenni Pulos-Elwood -- suddenly goes back to using her maiden name. The two facts aren’t entirely related, but the drama does have a way of piling on.

“It was a snowball effect,” Lewis said. “[Episode] 5 ends up being very dramatic, very, very dramatic. Crazy upsetting. Five is the bomb. It’s going to rock you. Nothing like we expected.”

“All I can say for all those people who say it’s fake, they’re still going to say what they want, but it’s not,” Pulos said. “It’s not.”

“They can check it out. There are ways to check it out,” Lewis said, sounding every bit like a nanny cam installer.

Lewis grew up in Orange County and, perhaps as a consequence, has an airbrushed quality even in real life, with a forehead leveled by Botox, sandy-colored complexion and an impeccably coiffed coiffure.

As of late, he has been living mostly around the toniest bits of Los Feliz, in homes he’s ruthlessly gutted, reworked and redecorated with flat-screen TVs, Krups coffee makers and KitchenAid ranges. Lewis keeps costs down and the frenetic quotient up by house-hopping as he sells one property after another out from underneath himself.

He wants to settle down, but “I’ve already moved three times this year,” he said.

Despite what could generously be called his best intentions, life appears to be conspiring against Lewis’ lifestyle. Luxury Los Feliz housing has suffered less than many of its residential cousins in Los Angeles, but nevertheless, our entire market has definitively softened, and to make his incredibly high ends meet, he has taken on remodeling clients as well as looking to accumulate more rental properties (he’s already purchased five) as he continues flipping. Oh, and he’s had to quit flying first class.

Lewis mentioned on air his feeling that Pulos and Elwood owe much of their creature comforts to him. But Lewis found his own way to Bravo thanks to the Elwoods, a pair of prototypical struggling actors who had been aiming for realty stardom themselves when Lewis snagged their limelight. After taping a five-minute presentation “pilot” for their pitch “The Wannabes,” Lewis stole the show by injecting gibes such as, “You are going to have to use common sense into what is trash and what is not trash,” or asking Pulos to cease and desist with the high heels with, “You’re not going to get discovered on the job site, so don’t worry about it.”

“Honestly, it’s very rare when you meet someone and know so absolutely he should be a TV show,” said Lauren Lexton, one of the show’s executive producers and co-owner of Authentic TV, the production company that discovered Lewis. “Jeff jumps off the screen.”

There appear to be two reasons Lewis has signed on to “Flipping Out.” One is to get a book deal to write a series of real estate- and design-related tomes. “Those are really, really tough to get” if you’re not a celebrity, he said. The other, seemingly, is group therapy.

“Unfortunately, I was so stubborn and self-centered and narcissistic I needed something this big, I needed this show to be played in front of millions of people for me to learn my life lessons,” he said. Unlike many reality stars, he says, Lewis believes TV has humbled him.

Hanging with a different crowd

HIS LESSONS include laying off the shamans: “That was one of the realizations that came out of Season 1. I haven’t seen a psychic in 12 months . . . I’ve been ‘sober’ for a year.”

“He was on that psychic bottle for . . . he was calling them three or four times a day,” Pulos said.

“No, twice,” he corrected, as Pulos comically mimed wide-eyed disagreement.

Another lesson: Steer clear of your fellow drama queens. “He’s less addicted to dramatic people,” Pulos swore. Who’s he hanging with instead?

“People who are accountable, how about that?” he said.

“People who are less negative,” she elaborated.

“Positive, accountable, honest people,” he summed up. Though a little later, in discussing his favorite bits of the Bravo lineup, he let slip this admission:

“I have to say it, ‘Real Housewives,’ guilty pleasure,” he said. “I can’t stop watching. And now that that [former real housewife] Jo is starting her singing career I can’t get enough of that. I’m actually wanting her to fail because it’s really funny.”

“That doesn’t go with our whole conversation,” Pulos chided.

“I regressed there,” Lewis said with a giggle.

“I would say it’s a subtle thing,” said Frances Berwick, vice president and general manager of Bravo, about Lewis’ personality overhaul. “It’s a process.”

Back to Lewis. “You know, there are people who are watching just to hate me. Fine, as long as you’re watching,” he said, though he doesn’t deny “there’s a certain vulnerability. We feel very exposed.”

“I’ve been called pathetic,” Pulos said. (The New York Observer said it.)

“Yes, you have,” Lewis quickly concurred. “The New York Times called me a very scary man” -- for the record, the Gray Lady also referred to him as a “delusional jerk” -- “You know what? I am scary,” he said.

“You are not,” Pulos clarified.

“I have a lot of friends, I’ve been in several long-term relationships, I can’t be that bad,” he said. “Socially, outside of work, I’m a lot more relaxed. I’m a big, sloppy drunk.”

“Kidding! That was off the record.”

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mindy.farabee@latimes.com