🇺🇸 USA · American cuisine · b. 1983
Korean-born, Michigan-raised Top Chef Season 10 winner — now the host of the franchise and chef-patron of Arlo Grey in Austin.
Kristen Kish is a Korean-born American chef, television host and author best known to a general audience as the winner of Top Chef Season 10 (Seattle, 2013) and, since 2023, as the principal host of Top Chef on Bravo — the first former contestant to take over the role. She is also the chef-patron of Arlo Grey, a modern American restaurant inside The Line Hotel in downtown Austin, Texas, which she opened in 2017.
Kish was born in Seoul in 1983 and adopted at four months old by an American family who raised her in Kentwood, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. She has spoken openly about reconnecting with Korean culture and cooking only in her late twenties and thirties, well after her formal training. She attended Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago, graduating in 2006, and worked in a succession of Chicago and Boston kitchens including Stir, the demonstration kitchen of cookbook author and TV personality Barbara Lynch in Boston's South End. Lynch became her principal mentor; in 2010 Kish was appointed chef de cuisine of Menton, Lynch's most ambitious restaurant and at the time the only Relais & Châteaux Grand Chef property in New England.
Kish was a contestant on Top Chef Season 10 (Seattle/Alaska) in 2012–2013. She was eliminated in the seventh episode of the regular competition but won her way back through the supplementary 'Last Chance Kitchen' series, returning for the finale in Alaska and defeating Brooke Williamson to win the season. Top Chef appearances followed (Top Chef Mexico, judging stints on Top Chef Junior) along with the 36 Hours travel-and-food series on the Travel Channel (2018–2020). In 2017 she opened her first solo restaurant, Arlo Grey, inside The Line Hotel in Austin, where she has lived since. Her 2017 cookbook Kristen Kish Cooking won the IACP Cookbook Award for Best Single Subject. In April 2023 Bravo announced that she would succeed Padma Lakshmi as host of Top Chef; the first Kish-hosted season, set in Wisconsin, aired in 2024.
Cooking as biography. Kish has frequently said that, as a Korean adoptee, she spent most of her early career suppressing her heritage in the kitchen; since her thirties she has built the Arlo Grey menu around dishes that overlay her Korean birth, Michigan upbringing, French-school training and Italian fine-dining career in Boston. The result is what she calls 'an American menu that refuses to pick a single past.'
Modern American restaurant opened October 2017; her first solo project. The opening menu drew on Italian, French and Korean idioms.
Chef de cuisine under Barbara Lynch at Boston's only Relais & Châteaux property at the time; the role that defined her pre-television career.
Barbara Lynch's demonstration-kitchen restaurant; her first job at the Lynch group.
These recipes from our database reflect the american cooking tradition that Kristen works in. They are not direct reproductions of Kristen's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“I spent fifteen years pretending I wasn't Korean. Then I realised the kitchen was the safest place to admit it.”
— Bon Appétit profile (2019)
“Hosting Top Chef is not about being the smartest in the room. It's about making sure the chefs in the room are seen.”
— Variety interview (April 2023)
Graduates from Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago.
Joins the Barbara Lynch Gruppo in Boston, first at Stir.
Appointed chef de cuisine of Menton, Lynch's flagship in Boston's Fort Point neighbourhood.
Begins filming Top Chef Season 10 (Seattle/Alaska).
Wins Top Chef Season 10 in the Alaska finale, defeating Brooke Williamson.
Opens Arlo Grey in The Line Hotel, Austin; publishes Kristen Kish Cooking.
Hosts the Travel Channel series 36 Hours, based on the New York Times column.
Kristen Kish Cooking wins the IACP Cookbook Award for Best Single Subject.
Announced as the next host of Top Chef on Bravo, succeeding Padma Lakshmi.
Hosts her first season of Top Chef (Season 21, Wisconsin).
Kish was eliminated in episode 7 of Top Chef Season 10 (Seattle), but returned via the 'Last Chance Kitchen' web spin-off — defeating six other eliminated contestants in single-elimination cook-offs hosted by Tom Colicchio. She re-entered the main competition for the Alaska finale, where she defeated Brooke Williamson to win the season in February 2013.
Kish was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1983 and adopted at four months old by an American family in Kentwood, Michigan. She has spoken extensively in interviews and on Top Chef about reconnecting with Korean cuisine and culture in her late twenties and thirties.
Arlo Grey is Kish's modern American restaurant inside The Line Hotel in downtown Austin, Texas, opened in October 2017. The opening menu drew on her Italian fine-dining background at Menton and her French training, with a growing Korean influence in later years. The restaurant has been a James Beard Foundation Award nominee for Best Chef: Texas (2024).
In April 2023 Bravo announced that Kish would succeed Padma Lakshmi as the host of Top Chef. She is the first former contestant — and the first Top Chef winner — to host the show. Her first season as host was Season 21 (Wisconsin), which premiered in March 2024.
Kish has consistently identified the Boston chef-restaurateur Barbara Lynch as her most decisive mentor. She worked her way up the Lynch Gruppo from 2009, becoming chef de cuisine of Lynch's Menton in 2010 — the role she held until going onto Top Chef.
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