To visit the set of “Top Chef” during an elimination challenge is a dream for most fans of the long-running, Emmy-winning reality competition series. But to do so when the cheftestants’ task is to take inspiration from Hawaiian pizza, arguably the most polarizing meal one could order, is a bit of a “careful what you wish for” moment.
“That’s what makes a great challenge. It’s something that everyone knows really well, but we’re asking you to think beyond and to make it different, and to create debate, create conversation to get us curious,” said executive producer and judge Gail Simmons to IndieWire on the set of the seventh episode of “Top Chef: Destination Canada,” titled “You Wanna Pizza Me?” “That’s where real innovation happens. When you push the boundaries of something that everybody knows and loves. Do you improve it? Do you make it better? Do you go all the way to the left? All the way to the right?”
Though Simmons was speaking about the challenge specifically, which highlighted how Ontario, her home province, is the birthplace of both the Hawaiian pizza and sushi pizza, her questions applied to the sentiment surrounding the new seasons of “Top Chef.”
After Season 20, the show’s first international edition titled “World All-Stars” wrapped, Emmy-nominated host Padma Lakshmi exited the Bravo series, and was replaced by Season 10 winner Kristen Kish. She came along with some major format changes, including immunity being granted for winning an elimination challenge rather than a Quickfire (the name for the 30 minute challenges that open the episode, and often grant the winning chefs a prize and/or advantage,) and Quickfires factoring into what chefs get eliminated in the back half of the season.
While any big change has its critics, the “Top Chef: Destination Canada” happened to be shooting the seventh episode the week before the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, where Season 21, the first season with Kish as host, received the show’s 18th nomination for Outstanding Reality Competition Program, and a nod for the “Top Chef: Seattle” winner in the Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program category.
“It’s still new enough where I’m just excited by the idea of just even being nominated,” said Kish of the Emmy recognition for her first season as host. “I never knew to expect it, so you can’t really be disappointed if you never knew that it could be a thing for you.”
The chef said she did not enter the esteemed host position ever feeling like she was responsible for continuing the momentum for the show receiving awards attention. “The beauty of this job is that when I look at the Host for Reality Television, I am who I am. I don’t have to think about how to be a better host for television,” said Kish. “There are intricacies that, of course, I am like, ‘Stand up straight. Think about what you’re saying. Maybe drop a few less F bombs,’ all those things. But I am doing me. I’m just being me, talking about things that excite me, which is food.”
Before her appointment as host, Kish was a “Top Chef” alum who had been back quite a bit before to offer mentorship to contestants. “We’ve always brought back talent here and there, but during the pandemic we had, they were all back and I think the fans liked it,” said chef, executive producer, and head judge Tom Colicchio on the set of Season 22.
The difference in her relationship with the cheftestants now, in her new role, is “I’m not getting to know them anymore. I’m getting to know them more just by nature of the frequency of seeing them and eating their food,” said the host. “It’s also really nice to have a vantage point of being able to see the first day and then being able to see who is going to take it. To see the growth of all the people, and just to see them along the way, it’s really nice.”
She added, “We talk before cameras start rolling, and we’re all standing there waiting for the challenge stuff to happen. And this batch of chefs has really good personalities. I’m fully enjoying the little bit of time that I have aside, shooting the shit with them in the morning.”
An example of that happened the day before, when the group shot the Quickfire at the base of production near Toronto, before packing up for the elimination challenge near Niagara Falls. In the studio, punctuated by a wall of syrups bottles in the shape of a maple leaf at the end of the hall, Kish and guest judge Eden Grinshpan, host of the Canadian edition of “Top Chef,” shared that the chefs would have to make a meal in 30 minutes inspired by the dirty dishes they picked up, each representing a different meal known for leaving the toughest stains to clean (think coffee, tomato sauce, mac and cheese, etc.) [Note: the challenge was sponsored by Finish Ultimate dishwater detergent.]
This particular Quickfire starting shooting a few minutes before 7 a.m., meaning Kish’s call time was around 4 a.m. What audiences don’t see is that the competing chefs actually had about 40 minutes of downtime where they can think about what they may make, and the producers can ensure they understand the rules of the challenge before they start shooting. This is when Kish was able to communicate a bit with the contestants, and shoot the shit with Grinshpan on topics like tattoos.
Walking into the kitchen set as the challenge got rolling, visitors are hit with a conflagration of different food smells. Now in its 22nd season of the series, the extremely athletic camerawork happening in the middle of the room, from several handheld shots, to a large camera crane whipping around, is not reflected in the seamless edit.
Even more surprising is that the chefs remained pretty efficient and effective, despite the clock actually ticking down in real time. Maybe it is because the season was already on the seventh episode, so the chefs knew what to expect, but there felt like more pressure watching them work from the monitors in video village than actually being in the kitchen, as they ran around making dishes like smoked salmon with a coffee crumble and a mochi maple oat ball.
As Kish and Grinshpan picked the top and bottom dishes, it was easy to see some throughlines of the season to come, with chef Tristen Epps being mentioned as someone who has been doing well on the show, and the season’s sole Canadian chef Massimo Piedimonte being a standout character, just based on his outsized reaction to hearing the elimination challenge involved Hawaiian pizza.
Fast forward again to Ravine Vineyard, the set of the elimination challenge, after contestants served everything from a spicy cumin lamb pizza with a scallion pancake as the dough, to a pho-inspired pizza with a rice base that was sadly crumbly instead of crispy, it was reasonably clear where the judges heads were at before they had gathered to decide upon which of the chefs would be packing up their knives and exiting the “Top Chef” kitchen.
“We didn’t ask them to make pizza. That wasn’t a challenge. The challenge was to kind of reinvent it, do something unique, do something different. And I think they all tried that, but most things, it’s not so much the idea, it’s the execution. And I think in some cases the least successful dishes were just not executed properly,” said chef Colicchio. “This is all on a scale. We’re not judging this against the best pizza in the world. We’re judging these eight or nine pizzas against each other. So the worst one goes home. That’s been true from day one with every single challenge because you can have several people kind of flop, and the question is what’s the worst.”
Regardless of all the elements that factor into the challenge, he emphatically said, “Who goes home is the person who makes the worst dish, period.”
Simmons dove deeper into the nuances of how the show determines winners. “There’s both elements: You have to be a great cook and you have to be entertaining. You have to be a good storyteller, but really you have to understand how to stay in the game. … Our show is not about strategy and allegiance,” she explained. “Our show’s always been reflective of the world. We’ve proven that a million times over, every challenge references the reality of working as a professional chef, especially if you look at the seasons we did in the pandemic and how we really address real life chef challenges head on.”
She continued, “Some of the challenges we do with our chefs may seem silly, ‘Why are you cooking on a boat?’ Or whatever. But really, everything takes the skill of being a cook and the idea that you go into your kitchen in the morning and your deliveries aren’t there, and your sous chef calls in sick and you have to cater a dinner for 400 people that night, and that’s how cooking works. It’s sort of a free-for-all, and you have to think on your feet and you have to be spontaneous. You have to understand your foundation, and you need to know good technique, and you need to be confident, and you need to stand by your food, and you need to show your voice, and all those things play into what being a chef is about.”
Simmons specified that the show is about being both a great cook and a great chef, which are two different things. “It’s about really being a leader. And I think that the show really reflects that because it is about professionals. It’s not an amateur show about wanting to know how to cook. It’s a show about cooks who would be doing this anyway, always because it’s their lifelong calling,” she said. “It really takes skill and professionalism. And ultimately the hardest part about ‘Top Chef’ is that working as a cook in the real world is about teams. It’s about working as a team. So it’s a very hard instinct to fight when you’re a cook, to come here and all of a sudden be self-serving because you’re so used to being a team player. But that also is understanding that balance of when it’s about me and the competition and when it’s about being a leader. And I think that we are able to integrate that into the show so well. And that’s who often rises to the top.”
For Kish, that focus on the food has been the most welcome change in her return to the series. “There’s less of them living ‘Real World’ style, which does something to your mental health and your mentality, especially if you’re an introvert like I am. It was just sensory overload. It was too much. So it’s less about the reality outside of the kitchen as opposed to showcasing the chefs inside the kitchen,” she said. One of her biggest issues from being a cheftestant, in hindsight, was the realization that anything she said on camera was fair game to be played over and over again.
“I remember in my first interview, they were like, ‘So you modeled back in the day?’ And I was like, ‘No, but not really. I did, but it was never a job.’ And they’re like, ‘But did you?’ And I was like, ‘Yes.’ And then they ran with it,” she said. “So yeah, lesson learned on that one. I should have kept my mouth shut. Because I don’t like that being part of my story.”
The show slightly shifting away from its reality roots is a bit reflective of recent changes in the restaurant industry, where a chef’s food is represented as being so much more personal to them. “Just by nature of where our industry has gone, it’s about storytelling and going to the roots that you want to go to, to differentiate yourself in this industry, and that is food you cook,” said Kish. “It’s just honed in more. It’s kept up with the times, the natural evolution. I’d be scared shitless if it was still like Season 1.”
“Top Chef: Destination Canada” airs new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
