'Top Chef' host Kristen Kish will defend quickfires for money '100%'

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred This spring, at an FYC dinner for “Top Chef” at “Top Chef Middle East” winner Charbel Hayek’s Ladyhawk in West Hollywood, I dug into the restaurant’s Bill Addison-approved mezze platter alongside host Kristen Kish and used the opportunity to venture that the recent 23rd season, set primarily in Charlotte, N.C., had made her into the new Tim Gunn, whose empathetic mentorship of flailing fashion designers defined “Project Runway” for a generation of viewers.Kish, a past “Top Chef” winner who admits she did not watch much reality competition before taking the helm of Bravo’s cooking contest in 2024, diplomatically skirts any attempt at comparison with Gunn, predecessor Padma Lakshmi or “The Traitors” emcee Alan Cumming.

But she acknowledges that her distinct approach — kinder, gentler, more tearful — is rooted in her particular skill set: “It’s similar to how I responded to being led in kitchens,” she says.“You don’t lead with fear.

You lead with compassion and empathy and encouragement and confidence.And two things can be true at the same time ...

I can require more from them, and I can also cry because I’m filled with joy for their progress.”Emmy-nominated for reality competition series and reality host, “Top Chef: Carolinas” epitomizes Kish’s swift remaking of the role in her own image.The season, which concluded in June, finds Kish comforting a distraught chef, Nana Araba Wilmot, who fails to plate her dish in the allotted time; navigating thorny questions of fairness and wellness with an injured contestant, Jennifer Lee Jackson, and her fellow-contestant partner, Justin Tootla; even facing acrimonious “feedback about [her] feedback” when chef Sieger Bayer is eliminated from the competition.

I recently caught up with Kish as she prepared for an Envelope photo shoot to ask her about the season’s most talked-about moments, recent criti...