The newest print edition of The Autostraddle Insider is here and it has Melissa King on the cover. Yes, that Melissa King. The award-winning chef and Top Chef: All Stars winner, Melissa King. Celebrated cookbook author and soon-to-be memoirist, Melissa King. Perennial heartthrob and No Filter fixture, Melissa King. That Melissa King.

In the magazine, the chef talks with food and culture writer Jaya Saxena about her evolution from a “painfully shy” kid who grew up straddling the lines between Chinese and American culture — unsure that she fit into either — to version of King we know today: the effortlessly confident chef who blazes her own trail, blending and redefining food culture along the way. The interview offers insight into how King has forged her own path, post-Top Chef. The interview captures everything that’s endearing about King: her infectious love for what she does, her humble self-assuredness, and, of course, those adorable dimples. It’s truly a must-read — and you can get a copy here or get the magazine and all future editions through an AF+ All-Access quarterly or annual subscription.

As I leafed through the pages of King’s interview — pausing to fawn at the incredible photos by Emmie America, natch — I could not help but reflect on the show that introduced us to her. For 20 years now, Top Chef has reshaped the culinary landscape, making household names out of chefs from across the country and a lot of those household names are queer. It occupies rarefied air in the reality TV space: few shows have been as committed to the inclusion of LGBT people as Top Chef. With queer women having being part of Top Chef since its inception, one would be hard-pressed to argue that the show isn’t the most most lesbian reality show on television.

“The good thing about chefs is that chefs are naturally diverse people. The kitchen is a welcoming place for a lot of people,” Ronald Mare, the Senior Vice President of Casting for Magical Elves, told The Wrap back in 2020. “So I feel like a lot of people in the LGBTQ community get involved in the kitchen, so it’s not something that you necessarily you have to look for. When you’re doing your search for Top Chef, it naturally comes in. Diversity naturally comes in whether it’s race or whether it’s sexual identity.”

In Top Chef‘s great gay history, King and Kristen Kish — both winners of their respective seasons — are standouts, but what about the rest of the show’s chefbians (to borrow a phrase from longtime Top Chef recapper, Dorothy Snarker)? Where are they now and, perhaps more importantly, where can we go to sample some of their food?

Tiffani Faison

Finishes: Season 1, Runner-Up; Season 8 (All-Star), 11th Place

It’s hard being the first: Tiffani Faison stepped into uncharted territory when she participated in the inaugural season of this cooking competition. To put it mildly, the show was not kind to Faison. She arrived in San Francisco cognizant that this was a competition and she acted like it…and, as is often the case with women, her ambition was stigmatized. She was given the villain’s edit and, as a viewer, it — particularly, that season’s reunion show — was hard to stomach.

It would be wrong to suggest that Faison’s moderated herself in the years since: her multiple James Beard nominations and her growing Boston restaurant empire are testaments to the fact that she’s every bit as ambitious now as she was then. She thrives now in the very environment that once tried to turn her into a caricature: offering thoughtful critiques on the judging panel on Chopped, competing with joy on Wildcard Kitchen, and serving as a sideline commentator for Tournament of Champions (after having won the show in its third season).

Padma Lakshmi

Finishes: Seasons 2-20, First in Our Hearts

Sure, she’s not a chef but one would be hard-pressed to argue that the most consequential queer person to ever appear on Top Chef wasn’t Padma Lakshmi. She changed not just the face of this show but, as she stepped into her role as executive producer, she reshaped how we see the culinary arts: decentralizing European cooking and bolstering the value we place on regional cuisine. Padma is an icon, a legend…and no one shall convince me otherwise.

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After her departure from Top Chef, Lakshmi restored herself by focusing on the things she loves: telling stories through food on Taste the Nation and her latest cookbook, Padma’s All American, spending more time with her daughter, less time at the gym and going on the occasional date…though, apparently, not with Melissa King (much to the Internet’s chagrin).  But now, she’s back: last month, Lakshmi returned to television as the creator/host/judge/producer of America’s Culinary Cup.

Josie Smith-Malave

Finishes: Season 2, 11th Place; Season 10, 7th Place

As with Faison, Top Chef was not particularly kind to Josie Smith-Malave. Particularly after Kristen Kish’s Restaurant Wars elimination — for which Smith-Malave is often blamed — the other chefs responded with a cruelty that revealed more about them than Josie. But if there is a recurring theme in Smith-Malave’s life, it is resilience.

She forged ahead after her Top Chef eliminations and after being the victim of a hate crime in 2007. When Long Covid upended her personal and professional lives — Smith-Malave was one of the first COVID cases in South Florida — she forged ahead, redirecting her energies toward a mayoral run to support her community.

Then, when her restaurant, Bubbles & Pearls, closed abruptly in 2024 — fallout from that closure continues to reverberate — Smith-Malave forged ahead yet again, launching The Joy Provisions, an immersive private dinner club experience.

Sandee Birdsong

Finish: Season 3, 14th Place

Aside from her iconic mohawk, the thing I most remember Sandee Birdsong on Top Chef isn’t her short run as a cheftestant, it’s her involvement in one of my favorite moments on Top Chef ever: Season 13’s “Big Gay Wedding.” Filmed before the Supreme Court’s legalized gay marriage, the episode featured about 25 couples pledging their love to each other, with Padma serving as the officiant. Birdsong stepped back in front of the Top Chef cameras to formalize her union with her longtime girlfriend, Patty. It was such a beautiful scene.

“For me the most memorable part of the whole day was watching Patti in her big white dress come walking out with Sandee in her white suit,” Padma recalled. “They were beaming, and I could feel the impact and warmth of the love surrounding us everywhere, not only from them, but from the procession of all the other couples accompanied with their loved ones, ready to make a commitment that had come so hard won for so many reasons.”

Unbeknownst to me, Birdsong had never really left the Top Chef universe, stepping behind the camera to work on the production side…a job she continues to hold. She was instrumental in guiding the show through COVID, setting up protocols that kept all the participants safe. She earned an Emmy nomination for her efforts.

Zoi Antonitsas

Finish: Season 4, 12th Place

This year, Top Chef will feature a couple among its cheftestants, only the second time the franchise has done so. The first instance came In Season 4 when Zoi Antonitsas competed alongside her then-girlfriend, Jennifer Biesty. Because of her relatively short stint on the show, Antonitsas’ relationship — which, apparently, ended ahead of the season’s reunion — became the thing we knew about her which is really unfortunate. After her appearance on the show, Antonitsas showcased what she was capable of: her stewardship of Seattle’s Westward put the restaurant on bon appetit‘s Best of 2014 list and won Food& Wine‘s Best New Chef.

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After that, it looked like Antonitsas would finally hang her own shingle in her hometown. Lunch pop-ups of the restaurant earned rave reviews and Little Fish was one of the most anticipated restaurants in Seattle. Unfortunately, though, extensive delays forced Antonitsas to walk away from the project. A new job for her wife in Portland, allowed Antonitsas to move to a new city, decompress, and regroup. She’s found some reprieve working as a private chef and doing culinary consulting in the Pacific Northwest.

Jennifer Biesty

Finish: Season 4, 10th Place

When you participate on a reality competition show with your significant other, there’s an obvious benefit: there’s someone there who understands what you’re experiencing and who can support you through the process. I couldn’t imagine trying to covey the chaos of a Top Chef kitchen on the phone. At the moments when your food doesn’t reflect who you are, as happens often on this show, it must be a profound comfort to have someone who truly knows you by your side. But this is a competition and your significant other is now your rival…that’s a weird tension to interject into a relationship. Plus, the odds are not in the couple’s favor: one cheftestant will likely exit before their partner does. How does that impact the remaining chef? A lot if Jennifer Biesty’s reaction to her then-girlfriend’s elimination is a guide.

“My focus is pretty raw. I want to win this bad. I’m doing this for Zoi,” Biesty repeated, multiple times, when her then-girlfriend was told to pack her knives and go. To her credit, Biesty did win one for Zoi — winning immunity in the very next quickfire challenge — but soon thereafter it was clear that her focus was no longer on the game and she was eliminated.

In the years since her Top Chef appearance, Biesty has shown up on other culinary competitions, while helming her own restaurant in Oakland called Stackwell. The California/Mediterrean/Spanish menu earned strong reviews and developed a following that sustained the restaurant for a decade. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the math just stopped mathing and Shakewell could no longer make the numbers work. Following Shakewell’s closure, Biesty moved back into the corporate space: serving as the executive chef at Pixar Animation Studios (AKA, the coolest gig in the world).

Lisa Fernandes

Finish: Season 4,  Runner Up; Season 17, 12th Place

There was something truly remarkable about Lisa Fernandes’ Season 4 run on Top Chef. After picking up two Elimination Challenge wins early in the competition, Fernandes faded dramatically, finishing in the bottom of seven straight elimination challenges. Each and every time she was among the judges’ least favorite dishes, though, she managed to survive, earning a spot in the season’s finale. No one expected her to win, especially against the two most successful chefs in the competition, but to everyone’s surprise, Fernandes cooked her ass off in that finale. I always surmised that the finale allowed her to finally just focus on the food and she thrived in that environment. If not for a mistake with some Kobe beef, she could’ve pulled off a huge upset.

After her Top Chef run, Fernandes returned to New York to serve as executive chef at Dos Caminos. Then, in 2013, she launched a food truck called Sweet Chili that showcased the Asian flavors that Fernandes loved. Six years later, Fernandes launched a brick and mortar version of Sweet Chili in Bushwick but the pandemic upended the franchise’s success and by June 2021, Sweet Chili closed its doors. For Fernandes, the restaurant’s legacy was a bolstered passion for mixology which has now become the focus of her career. Nowadays, you’re far more likely to find Fernandes slinging colorful concoctions behind a bar than in the kitchen.

Jamie Lauren

Finishes: Season 5, 7th Place; Season 8 (All-Star), 11th Place

Like Sandee Birdsong, Jamie Lauren — the captain of Season 5’s Team Rainbow — found a home behind the camera. Since Top Chef, Lauren has built a storied career in culinary production. Simply put, if there’s a culinary show that you enjoy, it’s likely that Lauren had some role in the behind-the-scenes action. She’s been involved In nearly all iterations of Top Chef , Chopped, and MasterChef. Hopefully, Lauren’s production work has helped ensure that other chefs aren’t subjected to the same poor edit that Lauren endured on All-Stars. Following her departure, Lauren criticized the show’s editing, noting, “it’s sort of like watching a trainwreck, watching them edit me to pieces. It’s really disappointing. That’s why I stopped watching, because I didn’t want to see what they did next…It seemed a little unfair.”

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(Given that Season 8 seemed built entirely to hand Richard Blais the Top Chef title after he choked in Season 4, I found Lauren’s complaints entirely plausible.)

In addition to her culinary production work, Lauren has worked as a private chef and consultant, helping stand up several new restaurants across California. Occasionally, she steps back in the kitchen, hosting Los Angeles pop-ups, and selling her own line of condiments, called “Sauce on the Side.”

Ashley Merriman

Finish: Season 6, 10th Place

Early in Top Chef‘s sixth season, the cheftestants participated in an elimination challenge that required them to cater a bachelor/bachelorette party. The challenge felt inevitable given the season’s setting in Las Vegas but Ashley Merriman took umbrage to having to participate. She righteously complained, “I find it beyond comprehension making us go do, like, effectively a wedding challenge when, like, at least three of us on the challenge aren’t allowed In that institution.” It was a profound moment that, I think, pushed Top Chef to become a more progressive program. I don’t know if the “Big Gay Wedding” happens in Season 13 if Merriman doesn’t take this stand in Season 6.

It’s a stark juxtaposition, perhaps, to another moment that stains Merriman’s career: in the early days of the #MeToo era, when it was just starting to roil the culinary scene, Merriman and her wife, chef Gabrielle Hamilton, announced plans to partner with Ken Friedman, a restauranteur facing numerous allegations of sexual harassment. Merriman and her wife eventually withdrew from the deal, their efforts at reform stymied by Friedman’s stubborn refusal to give the couple decision making power. The couple would then turn their attention back to Prune, their award-winning bistro in the Manhattan’s East Village, until it closed during the pandemic.

Nowadays, Merriman spends her time working as a partner and fitter at Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn-based bespoke tailoring company that makes suits for everybody, including providing free suits for the newly exonerated.

Preeti Mistry

Finish: Season 6, 15th Place

We barely get to know Preeti Mistry on her season of Top Chef. They were there and then they were gone, the third cheftestant voted out thanks to an underwhelming pasta salad. But, in the years since, Mistry has worked to leave an indelible impression on the culinary scene. Following their Top Chef appearance, Mistry returned to work as part of the Bon Appetit  Management Company at Google. They would leave the safety of her corporate work to strike out on their own and to deliver the fun, authentic, and inventive Indian food that they longed to create. At the urging of their then-girlfriend (now-wife), Mistry launched a pop-up out of a neighborhood dive in Oakland. They capitalized on the pop-up’s success and turned the Juhu Beach Club into a successful standalone restaurant.

Juhu put Mistry on the culinary map. They won plaudits from Anthony Bourdain, they’d pen her own cookbook, and Mistry earned two James Beard nominations. A few years later, she’d open a second restaurant, Navi Kitchen, that served Indian pizzas. Even as their star rose, Mistry remained committed to their activism, speaking out against injustice in their field, often to their detriment. Ultimately, burnout drove Mistry to close both of their restaurants and re-engage with food in a different way: as a farmer.

But last year, Mistry returned to the kitchen, taking over as executive chef at Silver Oak Cellars, a popular Napa Valley winery in Oakville, California. They also earned their first James Beard Award for their podcast, Loading Dock Talks, which features candid, in-depth conversations with industry professionals, often covering themes of identity and nostalgia.

Tracy Bloom

Finish: Season 7, 15th Place

Oddly enough, Top Chef probably isn’t the Bravo show that you know Tracy Bloom from. She was the third cheftestant eliminated during the show’s DC stop. But while Top Chef fans barely got to know Bloom, the wider Bravo audience got to know her through her time on Don’t Be Tardy, the Real Housewives spin-off featuring Kim Zolciak. The unlikely duo met when Zolciak came into the Atlanta steakhouse where Bloom worked and fell in love with the food. Zolciak returned and tried to recruit Bloom to become her personal chef but the Top Chef alum declined. But Zolciak was relentless: inviting Bloom over for smoothie sessions until, finally, she agreed to be Zolciak’s personal chef. Bloom was a fixture on all eight seasons of Don’t Be Tardy and she, Zolciak, and their respective families — including Bloom’s adorable little boy, Kannon — remain friends.

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Since then, Bloom continues to work as a chef and consultant. She released her first cookbook, Cooking in Full Bloom in 2022.

Kristen Kish

Finish: Season 10, 1st Place

Not to delve too much into the fourth season of Traitors — honestly, you don’t want to even get me started — there’s a moment, early in the season, where Kristen Kish and four of her other competitors find themselves chained to trees. To save their lives (in the game), they need to beg the Traitors to keep them alive. Two of the competitors comply, begging to continue as Faithful, another is defiant, threatening to unmask the Traitors if they keep him in the game. Then there’s Kristen, who stands against the tree, her hands bound and her eyes covered, and steadfastly refuses to indulge the Traitors’ request.

“I don’t beg for things. I don’t need to plea,” Kish said, plainly. “You’ve already made up your mind on who you wanted to murder before anyone got tied up on a tree, so I don’t worry about anything that I can’t control.”

The quiet defiance, the unwillingness to engage in the gameplay that being on reality television so often requires, reminded me a lot of Kish’s first pivotal television moment: her elimination in the famed “Restaurant Wars” episode of Top Chef Season 10 (which, to date, remains the most controversial elimination in the show’s history). It would’ve been so easy for Kish to trash a fellow competitor in that moment but, instead, she takes responsibility for what she could control and fell on the proverbial sword. Both moments — on Top Chef and Traitors — lets you know what kind of person she genuinely is…and it only underscores why she makes for the perfect host for this new iteration of Top Chef.

Joy Crump

Finish: Season 12, 15th Place

Considering all the volatility in the culinary scene, it’s rare to read a story like Joy Crump’s. She started a home based business, FOODE, in 2009 and then transitioned it into a brick and mortar restaurant in Fredericksburg, Virginia two years later. She’d join the cast of Top Chef for its 12th season and had one of the more frustrating early exits…one that reflected bad teamwork, rather than her culinary capabilities. It was a lesson about the importance of good teamwork that Crump carries with her to this day.

After that, she returned to FOODE and, seemingly, hasn’t left since. To be sure, she’s expanded her business profile since then: opening a second restaurant in Fredericksburg in 2014, expanding FOODE to a bigger location, and adding an event space to her portfolio. Particularly considering the impact of the pandemic, seeing a restauranteur survive for this long is truly remarkable. But if that wasn’t enough: last year, Crump added another title to her resume, city councilor. Determined to contribute more to her adopted hometown, Crump ran for and won an open seat on the Fredericksburg City Council, becoming the first black woman to ever do so.

Melissa King

Finishes: Season 12, 4th Place; Season 17 (All-Stars), 1st Place

If you love Top Chef and/or you love Melissa King (how could you not?), then Jaya Saxena’s cover story on the Season 17 winner for the latest edition of the Autostraddle Insider is a must-read. Here’s a little excerpt:

“My entire life I grew up thinking I wanted to own a restaurant and be a chef and get a Michelin star. It wasn’t until my experience with Top Chef that the world became so much more vast and open. I can do anything I want,” she told Food & Wine after winning Top Chef: All Stars. And so she did, with the game-for-anything attitude that first brought fans to her. She’s spent much of the past five years cooking at various pop-ups and collaborating with other chefs, including fellow Top Chef alumnus Mei Lin and Buddha Lo.”

There’s so much more in Jaya’s piece including…yes…more discussion about that Instagram video (you know the one!) that sent the gay Internet into a tizzy. It’s such an incredible insight into one of Top Chef‘s most endearing chefs. Plus, Emmie America steps behind the lens and captures King’s essence. You’ll want this edition for the photos alone, trust me.

Karen Akunowicz

Finishes: Season 13, 7th Place; Season 17 (All-Stars), 7th Place

Last November, the famed Michelin restaurant guide expanded to include Boston for the first time. It bestowed the Bib Gourmand Award, an honor to signify restaurants that make fine dining more accessible, to six Boston restaurants; of those, two belonged to Karen Akunowicz (Bar Volpe and Fox & The Knife). The honors are the latest in a long line of awards — including the 2018 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast — that are a testament to the career that Akunowicz has built since the pink-haired, queer femme chef showed up in the Top Chef kitchen.

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In addition to her restaurants (including an offshoot of Fox & The Knife called Fox and Flight), Akunowicz launched Fox Posta Company to bring expand the reach of her Italian flavors and she collaborated with Bona Fortuna to producer her own brand of olive oil. Even with all that and a toddler on her plate, the naturally competitive Akunowicz still makes time for culinary competitions. She narrowly lost her opening round gambit in the latest edition of Tournament of Champions.

Frances Ann Tariga

Finish: Season 13, 15th Place

Long before the show would host a global all-star competition in 2023, there was Frances Tariga, bringing her global flavors and perspective into the Top Chef kitchen. Born and raised in the Philippines, she worked at a luxury hotel in Dubai before becoming the personal chef of the royal family. If you want to get a true sense of what Tariga can do as a chef, I recommend watching her successful stint on Morimoto’s Sushi Master, as opposed to her short stint on Top Chef. She is an absolute delight — charming and warm — on both shows but she really thrived on Sushi Master. The show allowed her to combine traditional Japanese food and techniques with the flavors of her Filipino heritage. I imagine it was the perfect precursor to Oh! Dahon, Tariga’s vegan sushi restaurant that, unfortunately, closed at the end of last year.

One thing that struck me about Tariga’s time on Top Chef, though, was during her elimination she was critiqued for doing too much. It’s thoughtful advice usually but I’m not convinced that Tariga knows how to do anything else. She worked for royal families and in one of the most lavish hotels in the world: for her, doing too much is doing just enough. So it’s not surprising then to read about Tadhana, Tariga’s first restaurant featuring a 16-course (16!!!) contemporary tasting menu. The restaurant, whose name means “destiny” in Tagalog,” was voted the Best New Restaurant in NYC in 2024.

Silvia Barban

Finish: Season 14, 12th Place

Every Top Chef fan keeps a mental list…a list of chefs, undone by (seemingly) unfair challenges, who came close in their first appearance but just didn’t get the win, or who seem more capable than their exit might suggest. We all keep a running list of cheftestants who should get another shot at the competition, chefs who should, one day, be All-Stars. Silvia Barban has always been atop my All-Star wish list. Her short run on Top Chef‘s 14th season belied her talent. I also felt she was at a distinct disadvantage: Barban, a young chef who was a relative newcomer to the United States, was competing in a season of the show — set in Charleston, South Carolina — where the flavors were so uniquely American. It was a near impossible environment to thrive in.

In the years since Top Chef, Barban has honed the skills that would make her a great All-Star. She’s firmly established her own culinary identity as the owner of two successful Italian restaurants in New York City— Larina Pastificio e Vino in 2016 and Briscola Trattoria in 2024 — and a pasta shop, Tortelli, in 2025. New York magazine called Briscola one of the Best New Restaurants of 2024. But what’s been more interesting is seeing Barban conquer the very thing that upended her Top Chef run: fusing unfamiliar flavors with her own Italian flair. Back in November, Barban hosted a pop-up with Melissa King at Briscolla (#chefbiansunite!) and the menu was a perfect combination of Italian and Chinese American flavors.. Make Silvia Barban an All-Star!

Maria Mazon

Finish: Season 18, 5th Place

Maria Mazon’s path to being a cheftestant on Season 18 of Top Chef wasn’t a typical one. She didn’t join the competition with
the same pedigree that the other chefs had. She hadn’t gone to culinary school. She was self-taught, learning from the pages of doña Cuca Cardenas’ cookbook. She had never studied under a big, influential chef. Others could talk about working their way up in the kitchen in a way she couldn’t. The imposter syndrome that Mazon felt in that Top Chef kitchen was real…and it was exasperated by the fact that her mid-place finishes kept her from getting feedback from the judges.

But then: a breakthrough. In the most anticipated and grueling challenge of the Top Chef season, “Restaurant Wars,” Mazon thrived. This is what she knew — how to manage all facets of a restaurant, how to steer a ship in the midst of chaos — and she showcased it on the season’s biggest stage. It was a game-changer for Mazon and, over the rest of the season, audiences got to watch Mazon come into her own. Her confidence grew and she blossomed as a contestant and personality.

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In the years since Top Chef, it feels like Mazon has continued on that trajectory: learning, growing, and gaining more confidence with each step (despite some personal setbacks). I can’t wait to see what she does next (though, selfishly, I hope it’s creating her own line of salsas).

Jo Chan

Finish: Season 19, 10th Place

For Jo Chan, her stint on Top Chef wasn’t a detour on her chef’s journey, it was a continuation of it. She’s someone who has always sought out new challenges, as she proved when she left New York for Austin. Chan had found success in New York, working for culinary luminaries like Nobu Matsuhisa, Jonathan Waxman, and Marcus Samuellson, but she wanted an opportunity to take the reins of a restaurant. In Eberly, she found a restaurant to overhaul and imbue with a new identity. In Austin, she found an environment that prioritized collaboration over competition.

After Top Chef, Chan sought out yet another challenge: building something from the ground up. She launched Bureau de Poste, a French bistro within an Austin market, and earned stellar reviews. Austin Monthly dubbed it one of the city’s best new restaurants in 2024 while Texas Monthly touted it as one of the best across the entire state.

With that challenge seemingly conquered, Chan decided to bet on herself: “getting back to the plate and connecting with [her] guests more intimately” as a private chef and consultant.

Ashleigh Shanti

Finish: Season 19, 6th Place

At some point this season, I imagine that Ashleigh Shanti — one of the show’s alums from North Carolina — will find her way back into the Top Chef kitchen. The story of the culinary industry in the Carolinas cannot be told without reflecting on the impact of Hurricane Helene and few people are more equipped to tell that story than the Asheville chef. Shanti was fortunate, her home was spared by the 26-foot swells of the Swannanoa River, but all around her, there was devastation. She partnered with fellow Asheville chef Silver Iocovozzi to feed their community in the storm’s aftermath. Even now, 18 months after the storm, Helene’s impact is still being felt but what remains of the culinary scene is fueling the city’s resurgence.

If she returns to the Top Chef kitchen, Shanti will do so with a slew of new accolades to her name. She turned her pop-up, Good Hot Fish, into a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The modern fish camp was an immediate hit: the New York Times added the restaurant to its annual list of best restaurants, Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in 2024, and Shanti earned (another) James Beard nomination. She followed that success with the release of her cookbook, Our South: Black Food Through My Lens, which won Shanti universal praise, including a James Beard Book Award.

May Phattanant Thongthong

Finishes: Top Chef Thailand Season 1, Runner-Up; Season 20 (World All-Stars), 14th Place

Early in her run on Top Chef World All-Stars, May Phattanant Thongthong makes an impression. After securing a quickfire win — immunity, plus $10k — she and the other cheftestants are tasked with creating a rice dish. It’s officially the danger zone: on this show, no other ingredient has sent more chefs home than rice. But Chef May handles the challenge with ease, recalling a dessert from her youth. She makes the dish (rice pudding with watermelon puffed rice, salted coconut milk, and sweet potato) as a tribute to her mother and as a testament to how their relationship has grown since May came out to her at 13. There’s so much emotion poured into that rice pudding and, as she receives praise from the judges, it pours out of Chef May. It’s such a beautiful moment…one of the most indelible in Top Chef history.

Following her stint on All-Stars, Chef May returned to Thailand and continued to build her restaurant empire. After building MAZE Dining into a success — the Northern Thai fine dining restaurant been dubbed one of the best in Bangkok — May expanded to Phuket. She opened Aim Phuket in November 2025, seeking to tell the story of her native land using locally sourced ingredients.

A standout dish on the Aim Phuket menu? Bee go moi, the exact same rice dish she made on Top Chef: World All-Stars.

Rasika Venkatesa

Finish: Season 21, 11th Place

One of the beautiful things about Top Chef, I think, is that it forces chefs to truly ask themselves what they want to cook. For years, many of them have been in restaurants that celebrate French technique and center the European palette and never have to ask themselves, “is this what I want to cook or this just what I’ve been taught to cook?” Top Chef finally gives them time, away from the intensity of restaurant work, to consider it. For Rasika Venkatesa, the decision was a no-brainer: the South India native wanted to meld the cuisines she was trained in with the food that she’d grown up with. Early success with that strategy on Top Chef gave her “the confidence to realize that this is exactly the kind of food [she wanted] to represent as [her] cuisine.”

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Immediately following her stint on Top Chef, Venkatesa travelled back to India to learn more about Tamil cuisine and where she was from. She brought those lessons back to New York City where she launched Mythily, a progressive Indian pop-up concept named after her grandmother, in May 2024. Her pop-ups and and an extended residency at Fulgurances Laundromat earned Venkatesa a spot on the  Time Out‘s Best Young Chefs List. Last month, Venkatesa announced that a brick-and-mortar version of Mythily is on the way: she’s secured a location and Williamsburg and hopes to be open in late 2026.

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Mimi Weissenborn

Finish: Season 22, 15th Place

It feels like Mimi Weissenborn barely got her foot in the door before she was told to pack her knives and go on Top Chef: Destination Canada. It started out so well, though: Weissenborn was imminently charming as she lamented that her girlfriend had just left her, taking “the pots, pans, and pets” along with her. Then, she is part of the winning team in the first quickfire challenge — pocketing $5k for her hard work — and thinking Weissenborn’s here for the long haul. But sometimes you just have a bad game cook and Weissenborn’s came at the worst possible moment.

“I didn’t even get to give a good representation of myself, and I think that’s, in the end, the most disappointing part,” Weissenborn admitted. “I want a chance to redeem myself, to get back and prove, yes, I can cook. The story’s still unfolding, you know?”

Her story is still unfolding but in a different way. Last year, Weissenborn launched Bites & Such, a boutique private chef and event experience company. The venture seems like the perfect fit for Weissenborn who served as the executive chef at Sur Lie and Gather in Portland, Maine when the restaurant was a semifinalist for James Beard awards for both outstanding restaurant and hospitality. Eventually, Weissenborn and her business partner, Megan Dauphinais, want to open Camp Heron, an adult-focused summer camp.

What do you say: an A-Camp reunion, when Camp Heron opens?

New episodes of Top Chef now air on Monday nights on Bravo. Though I’m unsure whether any of the cheftestants are part of Team Rainbow, Kristen Kish is always there, looking fabolous, and being gay enough for everybody.