Kristen Kish is ready to take on the world.
The Top Chef host, 41, revealed where she’d like to travel next with the cooking competition show while exclusively chatting with Parade for her recent Pride cover story.
“Oh my God, I would love to go to Korea,” she said. “I would love to go anywhere in Japan. I would like to go to Australia. I mean, the whole world. Can we just, like, do a continent tour? That would be wonderful. And I would like to visit every single continent.”
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She joked, “I mean, it’s a small order, I think, to ask Bravo and NBC, but, you know, every continent would be a lovely experience.”
As for her favorite challenge on the show to experience as its new host, “The finale meals are just epic because you can feel the excitement,” she said. “You can feel someone’s life is about to completely change. And you get really, really great food. This finale this year is exceptional in every way.”
In Kish’s Parade cover, the restaurateur got candid about her coming out journey and how competing on the 10th season of Top Chef changed her life.
David Moir/Bravo via Getty Images
“Top Chef really encouraged me to find and to live my true, authentic life,” she says. “My whole entire life, I was scared of being judged for all the different things that I was — internally, externally. And when I went on Top Chef, and I realized that there are so many communities out there cheering for my success and to embrace all the parts of me, it almost gave me more confidence to be more myself.”
Related: ‘My Whole Life, I Was Scared of Being Judged.’ Now Kristen Kish Is Authentically Herself (Exclusive)
When Kish competed on the series, she was eliminated during the Restaurant Wars challenge but made her way back into the competition by way of Last Chance Kitchen.
“My first feeling when I got eliminated was relief because I was tired,” she tells Parade. “I was exhausted, mentally and physically. I think that judges table was going on for… I mean, back then, stew room was like eight hours. It was crazy. And so it was well into like 2 a.m. You’re standing there, I was hungry, and I was tired. When I was eliminated, I felt, ‘OK, finally I can go sit down, I can eat, I can, like, sleep.’ Very quickly I realized that the desire to make it back in was far more than what I ever expected it to be.”
She adds, “Yeah, it was an emotional rollercoaster.”