The latest season of Top Chef is a homecoming for long-time judge and Toronto native Gail Simmons.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
This year, the beloved Bravo reality TV series Top Chef is putting Canada at centre stage. Its 22nd season, which was shot across the country last year through the summer and fall, is not subtle in its odes to the Great White North.
Take, for example, the Top Chef kitchen, where harried contestants spend each episode cooking on the clock. One wall sports a floor-to-ceiling maple leaf-shaped shelf stacked with bottles on bottles of maple syrup. A pair of paddles and canoes, designed by an Indigenous mother and daughter, is mounted nearby. The pantry is emblazoned with a flickering dépanneur sign, while a French newsstand sits in the corner.
Warm and woody, the set indeed feels Canadian. So do the challenges, which have the chefs cooking through the country’s five respective regions in one episode, and putting their own spin on poutine in another. Guest judges this season inclde Canadian actress Sarah Levy, and the show features appearances from Scarborough, Ont., food journalist Suresh Doss and actor Michael Cera.
The season takes the 15 contestants, who are competing for a $250,000 grand prize, along with a feature in Food & Wine and the opportunity to headline their own dinner at New York’s James Beard House, through Toronto, Calgary, Montreal and Charlottetown.
For long-time Top Chef judge and Toronto native Gail Simmons, it’s a homecoming. “It’s exciting but there is a little bit of pressure, because I want everyone to love it; it’s where I grew up, and I’m so emotionally attached,” she said in an on-set interview in September. “It’s been a totally different experience to shoot somewhere where I already know my way around. I have a community of high-school girlfriends and my family waiting and watching.”
Needless to say, Simmons knows the local cuisine well. Before the season got under way, she wrote up a “very long list” of restaurants, chefs and locations to feature. “I wanted to show the country off,” she said.
Some of those spots include Kiin, BB’s Diner, Dil Se; the list goes on and serves for a sumptuous snapshot of just how diverse Canadian cuisine is.
Still, it’s hard to watch this new season of Top Chef without thinking of the continuing political and trade tensions between Canada and our neighbours to the south that are currently making headlines. When the season was filmed last year, it was just before the U.S. presidential election.
At the series’ Toronto premiere in March, Simmons said she was “proud” to present the country in a positive light for all to see and that, actually, it’s “good timing.” (And judge Tom Colicchio declared he absolutely did not vote for Donald Trump.)
When we spoke in the fall, Simmons also said, “In general, I don’t think Americans know much about Canada. [This season] has really allowed us to help people understand the differences culturally. Because there is a difference.”
When it comes to Top Chef itself, which premiered back in 2006, a lot has stayed the same: chefs compete in culinary challenges, are judged by notable figures in the food and restaurant industry and are eliminated one-by-one. A lot of the folks behind the camera have been a part of the team for most seasons. Colicchio and Simmons have been mainstays ever since the start, while host Kristen Kish was the winner of the series’ 10th season, taking over hosting duties from Padma Lakshmi last year.
The Top Chef team generally takes two days to shoot each episode, and each day of filming takes about 14 hours, and six to seven cameras. In other words, a lot gets cut and, sometimes, that can make one particular judge seem harsher than another.
Although the contestants walk onto the set much more decorated and successful each season than the one before it (lest we forget, early seasons featured largely line cooks), Colicchio says his approach remains the same: “I take the subjectivity out of it,” he says. “It’s not about what I like or don’t like. We all have prejudices, and I try to neutralize that as best as possible.” In fact, and you’ll notice this each time he eyes a dish: he keeps a sharp focus on the composition of each dish, including the ingredients used, the role they play, the flavour balance and the plating.
When it comes to bringing on more accomplished talent, Colicchio explains, “You can’t bring in a professional chef and have them go up against a student. They’re not fast enough with a knife, it’s not fair and it’s not interesting. And they’re going to be the first to go home.” The hope, he says, is to provide financing to someone who just needs that one leg up, particularly female chefs, who are often undercut when it comes to funding in the industry.
Behind the camera, the crew seems to enjoy watching the action like fans; there is quite a lot of adoration for Kish, and plenty of laughs and grimaces go around as the judges drop some tough critique.
Apart from the chefs and the food, what remains especially appetizing is the styling, done by wardrobe stylist Charlotte Rose Coleman, an artist in her own right who joined the show in Season 10. It’s her we have to thank for outfitting Kish in the greatest and sharpest suits on television.
This season, Kish – who Coleman says is essentially her “muse” – takes her suits into a more vibrant, geometric direction.
“When she came into the role of host, our first thought was always, how do we keep it true to her and ensure we’re not playing in the ballpark of Padma? We’re starting fresh,” Coleman said. “One thing Kristen was really adamant about was that she only felt comfortable in pants and a neutral palette. And the last time she wore a pair of heels was at her prom! I always remind her, TV’s Kristen Kish can be a little different from Kristen Kish at home, and they don’t compete with each other.”
We also have Coleman to thank for perhaps one of the most memorable moments of the season, when the trio pop out in Canadian tuxedos in the premiere.
That push toward a bolder vision is what makes Season 22 stand apart. Not only does the wardrobe make an impact, but so, too, does the set and the powerhouse chefs. After all, say the Top Chef team, it doesn’t feel like they’re just competing with other reality television anymore with newer, global food-centric shows like The Bear, Boiling Point and Hunger bringing scripted commercial kitchen drama to TV screens.
“It’s a natural groundswell, because food gets at the heart of so many issues,” Simmons says. “Food touches politics and agriculture and sustainability. It touches diversity and immigration, all the big things that our country thinks about on a daily basis, and affects our lives, especially now. I think that it has become understood as a universal language. And so, using it as the entry point for bigger and deeper conversations seems natural. Everybody eats, right? People love to tell me how they’re not foodies or they don’t go out to eat; it doesn’t matter. You’re alive, you have opinions, you have to eat three times a day. That’s enough to understand.”
