It will come no surprise that we love a good culinary competition. Bravo’s Top Chef is a long time EPR must-watch — our Teams messages frequently start with, “are you caught up yet?” when a season is airing. So you know we have our DVR set and our watchlist updated for the debut of Season 21: Wisconsin kicking off March 20!
Here’s five things we’re excited about for this season:
- New host — we’ll miss Padma, but we’ve followed Kristen Kish since she won Season 10 and hosting her as the guest chef at PPHG during Charleston Wine & Food festival. Okay and we watched her on Fast Foodies. And Restaurants at the End of the World. It’ll be fun to see what she brings to the show.
- New rules — say what?? Bravo announced the show format will change a bit this year, with cash prizes only for Quickfire Challenge wins and immunity up for grabs during Elimination Challenges. They’re also going to consider both challenges in episode eliminations.
- Cheese. Look if you’re filming in Wisconsin, we expect cheese. And lots of it.
- Last Chance Kitchen — sure, you can watch Top Chef without watching LCK but why would you?
- Sara Bradley! The owner/proprietor of freight house in Paducah, Ky., will be a guest on this season after finishing runner-up in last season’s Top Chef Season 20: World All-Stars.
We’re not just Top Chef super fans. We’ve also had the honor of working with several chefs who competed on the show including Lindsay Autry (Season 9: Texas), James Rigato (Season 12: Boston), Kwame Onwuachi ( Season 13: California), Annie Pettry (Season 14: Charleston) and Sara Bradley (runner-up in Season 16: Kentucky and Season 20: World All-Stars). Season 21 of Top Chef premieres Wednesday, March 20 on Bravo with an entire season of supersized episodes every Wednesday night from 9 to 10:15 p.m. Episodes will be available the next day on Peacock. Click here to learn more about this season’s cheftestants.
