Top Chef Judge Gail Simmons seems like she’s a little tired of discussing how much Top Chef judges eat, and honestly? Fair enough.
When long-time host Padma Lakshmi (seasons 2-20) announced that she was leaving to host another show in 2023, most of the headlines focused on her admission that having to eat so much food for the show was “taking its toll.” That was actually just one bit of a wide-ranging interview at the time, but people so loved the idea of a glamorous supermodel getting sick of binge-eating that outlets adjusted their coverage accordingly. Even this writer headlined an interview with Top Chef host Kristen Kish “Kristen Kish Reveals Her Secret for Eating 15 Plates of Poutine” back in March. Americans love an extreme eating angle, and in a keyword-driven news ecosystem, we journalists mostly lack the juice not to cater to them (in this economy?).
Yet when my own interview with Simmons briefly touches on some of the caloric-intake related aspects of Top Chef judging, I can tell that she has to make an effort not to slip into autopilot, and suddenly I’m reminded of the other side of things.
Again, understandable. Top Chef’s co-lead judge since season one in 2006 (only Gail and Tom have been there since the first season; Lakshmi took over for original host Katie Lee in season two) Simmons has accomplished a lot in her life beyond “eating lots of food.”
Simmons grew up in Toronto, with a mother who was a food columnist for the Globe and Mail and who also ran cooking classes out the house. After graduating college and working as a food writer for a time, Simmons thought she could benefit from some culinary training herself, and attended what was then called Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School (now the Institute of Culinary Education). After a few stints working in high-end kitchens (including Le Cirque and Jean-George’s Vong), Simmons ended up taking a job as assistant to Jeffrey Steingarten, the award-winning author of the culinary memoir The Man Who Ate Everything. In a 2007 interview, Simmons described her time with Steingarten as “alone in a house with him for two years, making goose, after goose, after pizza, after goose.”
By 2004 she was a special projects manager at Food & Wine magazine, and apparently just the kind of expert (with telegenic looks) that Bravo needed to give its new food-centric Project Runway spinoff some legitimacy.
Almost 20 years later, Simmons has published a memoir (in 2012), a cookbook (in 2017), started a production company (in 2014), alongside hosting or guest hosting too many cooking shows to count. All the while she’s been a steady presence on Top Chef, where she was apparently once known, per the same 2007 interview, as the “resident ice queen.”
It’s funny to imagine her as a frosty hardass these days, as Simmons, an affable Canadian through and through, has become the person uniquely capable of putting into words critiques that can occasionally come off as Tom Colicchio’s crotchety whims. Simmons takes them and applies her genius for articulation, and voila: that Top Chef magic.
With this season’s first-ever Canada-set season (its 22nd), Simmons has allowed herself to become the show’s de facto ambassador for Canadian culinaria. Now, with the season 22 finale set to move to Milan for its last few episodes, Simmons spoke to us about how Kristen Kish differs from Padma Lakshmi, how the show continues to reflect broader shifts in the culinary landscape, and what to expect from Top Chef’s first trip to Milan.
DECIDER: How would you describe Kristen’s energy as host versus Padma?
GAIL SIMMONS: I guess I try not to compare them, they’re totally different human beings with totally different personalities and styles to what they do. I would just say Kristen has an amazing empathy as a human being and especially as a former contestant, and I think that really plays well into the relationship she has with the chefs. Also think that she’s just sunshine, a lovely person to be around and we have fun together. It’s a tricky question because I was working with Padma for 18 years and she was like a sister, so there’s a loss there, I guess, but she’s still in my life, you know what I mean? The television world might not have her sitting next to me, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t exist. And of course, Kristen’s amazing. I’ve known her for a decade since she won Top Chef, and she’s also been in my life ever since too, so it wasn’t as if I didn’t see her for 10 years and then she just popped back up again. But I think she’s really worked hard to bring her own sense of self and style to the show..
I talked to her a few months back and she said that one piece of advice that you gave her was to always eat breakfast before you’re going to eat a lot of food that day.
I mean, I’d like to think I’ve given more advice in my life than that, but I’m glad that it resonated and it certainly was a small lesson I’ve learned through the years. It is important. But I think people get hung up on how much food we eat. People get really worried, as if it’s a fear. It’s really not an issue! You don’t finish your plate. You have a few bites of food. But my advice always is to eat breakfast. If you don’t eat breakfast, you end up eating too much when you’re judging and that’s when you end up not feeling great because there’s just so much good food around you at all times.
So you’re judging a lot of these around lunchtime?
Not always. Every challenge is different, but generally our challenge meal, whatever it may be, is in the middle of the day.
So is that the last meal of the day for you guys or–
No, it’s the middle of the day. There’s another meal. It’s called dinner, and that comes four or five hours later. I’m still human! I still have to eat dinner. Then we do a five-hour judges table in between. It’s a very long day is what I’m saying. People don’t know when they’re watching the show, but that’s how long it actually takes. Yes, you can eat a big lunch, but we’re human. Five, six hours later you’re going to be hungry again. That’s how bodies work, right?
What do you think is the best thing that you’ve eaten this season?
I can’t tell you because the three best episodes are yet to come! I will say, there’s been a lot of great food this season. Every single challenge there’s been at least one or two dishes that have floored me. The Pickle Tart that César made in our pickle episode was really mind blowing–something I think all of us will remember for a very, very long time. It was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten on Top Chef. And the herring dish that Tristen made in that same episode was also incredible. But there’s been so many dishes this season, I think it’s a particularly strong cast, and they’ve cooked so many memorable things. But we also eat hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of things every season, and it was shot eight months ago, so I can’t remember everything. But everything that you see me reacting to is exactly how I reacted.
Are there dishes that didn’t win on an episode that you’ve found yourself thinking about again over the years?
Well, that Pickle Challenge was the perfect example. Yes. Both of the dishes that I just mentioned from our pickle episode weren’t on the winning team, so they didn’t win. And the dish that did win was also extraordinary Massimo’s steak tartare in the pickle cigar, and he was the winner because of how the game was played. But the other two dishes were probably more memorable in terms of their inventiveness, and neither of those were winners. That happens all the time. Because people forget, it’s of course, always about whose dish was the best that day, but there’s also the game.
You talked about the level of competition this season. But how do you think this group compares to the last group? Not necessarily in terms of cooking level, but even just the group dynamic?
God, it’s so hard to compare. It’s like a cohort, like a class, and I remember each class that’s gone through our bootcamp pretty clearly. Each class takes on its own feel, its own story, its own personalities. This season was really special, and I’m not sure if it was just because we were in Canada at a time when it was a very special time to be in Canada, away from the States. It was right before the election, and there was just a lot going on in life, and being in my home country felt special, but I think a lot of it was just who they are as people. They had a lot going on in their own lives that came out in the course of the show that we didn’t even know about a lot of the time until afterwards.
So the episode with Tristen [finding out his stepfather had died in the middle of an episode], that was basically the way it happened, where you guys didn’t know about that phone call until after judges table?
No way. And they would never tell us. He wanted to stay in the game, and he did, and that would’ve influenced how we felt about him. We don’t want that. It’s the same thing as when you go to a restaurant, you don’t want to know that the chef had a death in his family or that the sous chef didn’t show up for work that morning or that the dishwasher’s wife left him. I’m not saying not to be an empathetic human being about their circumstances, but that’s not part of the conversation. And so we had to let him dictate that experience, not us. He wanted to prove himself, and that was his way of coping and how he wanted to step up for his father. If we had been privy to it earlier, it would’ve influenced our thoughts and we would’ve put our own projected weight of that onto him. And that was his story to tell, not ours.
When you were writing about food for magazines, did you ever have to take steps to be anonymous when you would eat dinner someplace?
No. I was never a restaurant reviewer–I still write about food for magazines, by the way, but I’m not a restaurant reviewer. That has not been my position for many years. I wrote restaurant reviews in my twenties for magazines in New York and back in Canada before I moved to New York, but I haven’t reviewed restaurants as an anonymous professional restaurant reviewer in a very long time. I eat out as part of my job all the time, but I don’t need to be anonymous for the sake of reviewing it for the public. I only write about restaurants I really want to write about because I like them, or other things in the food world, or guides or travel stories that are connected to restaurants and chefs and food, but not necessarily because I am reviewing them for a formal restaurant review. I just play a restaurant reviewer on television, you know what I mean?
This season seems like maybe it’s less white tablecloth-focused than some of the past ones. Do you think that’s true, and do you think that that was at all a conscious decision?
I don’t think it was conscious. I don’t know if that’s true. I can’t do such a head-to-head comparison season to season that way, but I think in general, and this is non-scientific and not a conscious thing, but we as a culture over the last several years have put less emphasis on what was traditionally white tablecloth, fine dining food–ie, western/French-inspired cooking. That was for so long the definition of fine dining and what was considered good food at the highest level. But I think over the last decade, really our culture and our industry has veered away from that in a macro sense, because we all know now that the best food in the world doesn’t have to have a white tablecloth or be cooked by a French person in order to be good. I think in general, it has been very conscious of Top Chef to cast a much more diverse contestant base. I don’t think we’ve lowered the bar on their cooking capabilities, in fact I think the bar has gone up in terms of skill and innovation. I just think the pool has been diversified to include more cultures, more ingredients, and a wider worldview. I just think as a culture we’ve widened our scope of what incredible food can be and it doesn’t have to have 17 forks.
Do you have favorite things to eat in Canada or that you think Canada in particular does well that people don’t necessarily think of as Canadian food?
Yeah, I’ve talked a lot about this over the course of the season. Every place we go, people ask the question, well, what is Canadian food? And my answer is always, well, what’s American food? If I came to you not knowing much about America and asked you what American food is, you’re not going to say hamburgers and pizza. That’s not our greatest representation of what America has lent to the culinary landscape of the world. I’m not saying they’re not great, but that’s not the most sophisticated representation of what makes American food so special. And I would say the same for Canada. I think that what Canada does really well is ingredients and representation of its indigenous culture in a much more sort of conscientious way. I also think it’s such a vast country. It’s the second biggest country in the world. So from a landmass perspective, it’s impossible to tell you one thing that Canadian food is, right? It’s like America. The food in Boston versus the food in Louisiana, it’s completely different—
Unless you’re Emeril.
You’re right. He’s the one exception to the Boston-Louisiana conundrum. But otherwise, Canada is just such a vast place and so nuanced and regional. The food in PEI versus the food in Calgary versus the food in Vancouver versus the middle of the country in Toronto – it’s an incredibly diverse place.
It’s funny you mentioned the burgers and pizza, the last time I was in Toronto a few years back it really stood out to me as a great burger city.
I mean, there’s some great burgers and yes, poutine is great there, too. It just doesn’t define us, you know what I mean? I don’t want burgers to define America, but that’s not to say that maple syrup isn’t the best possible ingredient ever, and I will stand by it.
How much of Top Chef do you think is trying to be true to the challenges that a restaurant chef faces, and how much of it is creating a fantasy scenario where cooking is the only thing that matters in a restaurant?
I think it touches on concepts of the real skills required to run a restaurant. They are exaggerated for television. Obviously a lot of those scenarios a chef wouldn’t find themselves in on a daily basis when they’re working in a restaurant, but we put them there for a reason. They call on skills that chefs need to have in order to be strong leaders in a kitchen and to execute great food. The other piece is that we would never want to just give them straight-up challenges that would be the same as would happen in their own kitchens. If we wanted that, we could just make a show about going to their kitchens and watching them cook what they do every night with their teams in their home bases where they’re comfortable and everything’s easy and systematic. And that would make for very, very boring television. You have to remember that it is, in fact, television and we don’t want to see them in their comfort zone. I think all the challenges we create serve a purpose, to either highlight something unique about the place, or to highlight skills that chefs need to be great chefs. Tom always says that a lot of the greatest food we eat on the show is born out of circumstance. That Pickle Tart would never ever have been created in a regular kitchen. So yes, that was created for television, but it was a stroke of genius. It took gumption and serious skill and creativity, and it was born out of these circumstances that only existed in this place and time, but because of it, he created something new. And I can guarantee that that dish will be part of Top Chef lore.
Your guest judges have been great this season. I really enjoyed Michael Cera and also Greg “Tarzan” Davis. But I have to ask, was he the biggest name you could get from the Mission Impossible franchise? How many people turned you down before you got to Greg “Tarzan” Davis?
The booking of our guests is above my paygrade. Like Tom Cruise, probably not available.
I don’t know that he even eats regular food.
He’s like an alien. Anyway, [Greg “Tarzan” Davis] turned out to be great. We were pretty happy to have him. I mean, it was a crazy challenge, Mission Impossible, obviously it was like a collaboration with them, and it allowed us to push the limits of what we could do with our chefs. And Tarzan was down for it, which is great. We don’t want to bring on a guest who doesn’t want to eat the food and doesn’t want to be part of the process.
Did you get to do the Edge Walk [at the CN Tower in Toronto] yourself?
I didn’t. I could have. I’m from Toronto, so I’ve been there many times. I haven’t done the Edge Walk. I guess I would do it? I don’t know. I left it for the chefs.
So you’re going to Milan for the finale. What was the first thing that you wanted to eat when you got to Milan?
What didn’t I want to eat? I mean, a proper risotto, first of all. God, everything in Milan was really great. The pasta was fantastic. That area is interesting because it’s very different in cooking style than many of the places we’ve been before. Certainly very different than Tuscany, Rome and Southern Italy. We were there in October, which was sort of the start of truffle season and of winter and fall, and that was really beautiful. And we got to use all of these gorgeous, rich ingredients–the mushrooms and the cheeses and things like that, that I think really make Milanese cooking special. Lots of saffron.
Oh, interesting.
You’ll learn all about it in the show!
The stereotype of Canadians is that you’re nicer. And it seems like this season has been very “Canada nice.” The contestants seem like they mostly get along and it’s sort of friendly in the way that some seasons aren’t.
Oh, it’s friendly. I think the last several seasons have been very friendly. You were also asking about the white tablecloth, fine dining idea, and have we actively, consciously changed that. It has happened, but I think the thing of being nicer in the restaurant kitchens and on Top Chef is a very similar shift. In the last decade, every season the chefs have been pretty nice to each other. There hasn’t been all of that drama and infighting for many seasons, because I think it’s also reflective of the industry. The last decade in the restaurant industry we have all put our foot down and come to a realization that restaurants don’t have to be these toxic, army-style systems in order to be great. I think that’s a gradual change in the industry as a whole, not just on our show.
I also think that in an age of self-awareness, because people are on social media, they see themselves on television, they’ve watched Top Chef for 20 years now and they’re not as naive about how they can be portrayed and how television can edit you. Also with social media you are more in control of creating who you are. I think that has played into making it a safer, better place that’s more about constructive criticism than it is about critique and is more about taking care of each other. And if anything, we’ve shown that you can still compete and win at food without degrading other people.
Top Chef Season 22 airs on Thursdays at 9/8C, with episodes available to stream the next day on Peacock.
Vince Mancini is a culture writer and old school blogger whose work has appeared in GQ, Defector, The Ringer, Uproxx, and more. He runs The #Content Report on Substack and hosts a podcast called Pod Yourself about prestige TV .