We are speaking on hallowed ground.
I’m at a table on an elevated platform at the James Beard House, the New York City landmark that is considered sacred in the world of food and culinary arts: the West Village house where the renowned chef, now the namesake of cooking’s most prestigious awards, once lived and is now a venue for posh dinners prepared by the best chefs in the world.
The judges of Top Chef are with me—Kristen Kish, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio—as is the spirit of James Beard himself. We joke that we’re in some cozy, secluded mafia corner on this platform. But the real lore is that this was Beard’s bedroom, and he would sleep there with his feet sticking out the window. That’s how neighbors and visitors knew he was home.
So it’s near the feet of one of the most celebrated chefs in the world that the four of us are celebrating. Later that night, we’ll be eating the dinner prepared by Tristen Epps-Long, the winner of Season 22 of Top Chef, whose prize package included the opportunity to prepare a meal at the James Beard House. It is also just days before the March 9 premiere of Season 23 of the show, which was filmed in the Carolinas.
Up next for us is a dinner featuring charred toro bluefin tuna souse and wagyu beef flatiron steak, along with a lot of gossip with host Kish about her time in the castle as a contestant on the just-wrapped season of The Traitors. But as an amuse bouche, we dish on what’s in store for the new season of Top Chef.
As the show has traveled around the globe in recent seasons, location has become as much a character on Top Chef as the contestants and its hosts. So it’s fitting that the Carolinas very quickly offered the show a guest star, in the form of a snake that slithers around the judges’ table during an outdoor challenge.
Both Kish and Simmons scream, remembering the incident. Consider it an occupational hazard.
“Our second episode, we shot at a farm,” Simmons recalls. “And the farmer at the end of the day said to us—after we were on the farm all day. We were walking through the farm. I was actually in some pretty tall grass at one point. We were taking pictures on the tractors. And then at the end of the day, he was like, do not go into this forest because it is covered in snakes and spiders and like all and all sorts of nasty things. And I’m like, great. I wish you told me that seven hours ago.”
“It’s a good thing that they didn’t tell us,” Kish says. “Because then that’s all I would think about. I’d freak out.”
Colicchio, on the other hand, seemed unbothered. He tells me a story about when the show was shooting in Alaska, and there were three bears in a tree staring at production as they shot an episode. Someone kept an eye on them to make sure everything was safe, but filming continued.
“It was a mama and her cubs, and they’re up in the tree, and they just watched,” he says. “They had to sign an NDA, I guess. But yeah, the snake wasn’t the first time.”
Season 23 of Top Chef comes as the show is experiencing a grand appreciation. While so many reality TV competitions are struggling for relevance and pulling out any stunt a producer can imagine to attract viewers, Top Chef is, largely, just sticking to its tried-and-true formula: keep it classy, and let the contestants cook good food.
The biggest shakeup this season is that two pairs of contestants come into the competition knowing each other: a set of identical twin brothers and a couple who opened a restaurant together. (There’s a humorous moment in the premiere where the couple talks about how opening a restaurant nearly broke them. But surely, competing in a reality TV show together will be easier…)
Top Chef has had brothers compete before—the iconic Voltaggio brothers—but it’s been a while.
“It’s kind of like a Kelce family situation,” Simmons says, referring to football players Jason and Travis Kelce. “Like, what are the chances that they both go into the same industry and that they both excel in the same industry? The numbers are pretty small.”
The Carolinas season of Top Chef comes after a globe-trotting few years for the series. Last season was filmed in several locations in Canada. Recent seasons have had contestants cooking everywhere from London to Wisconsin.
“I think our audience expects us to just go from big city to big city, because they’re all food cities,” Simmons says. “But what we have the privilege of doing at this point in the show’s life is that there’s amazing food in every corner of this country and different stories to tell and ingredients and cultural touch points and immigration patterns and all the things that make food different and exciting and local.”
“Our point isn’t just to go to the places you expect there to be great food,” she continues.” “We’ve done New York, we’ve done LA, we’ve done Chicago, we’ve done Miami. Yes, we know there’s great food there. What I think is the most exciting is that we’re at the point where we’re actually showing people new things and new places.”
