🇺🇸 USA · American cuisine · b. 1976
The first woman to win Top Chef — now Chicago's most prolific restaurateur, with the Girl & the Goat group across three cities.
Stephanie Izard is an American chef and restaurateur based in Chicago, best known as the chef-patron of the Girl & the Goat restaurant group and as the first woman to win Bravo's Top Chef, which she did in Season 4 (Chicago, 2008). She was named Best Chef: Great Lakes by the James Beard Foundation in 2013 and won Bravo's Iron Chef Gauntlet in 2017, defeating Michael Symon, Bobby Flay and others to take the Iron Chef title.
Izard was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1976 and raised principally in Stamford, Connecticut. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1998 with a degree in sociology and then enrolled at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute in Arizona, working through Chicago kitchens including Spring under Shawn McClain and La Tâche before opening her first restaurant, the small Lakeview neighbourhood spot Scylla, in 2004 at the age of 27. Scylla earned several local accolades but closed in early 2007; her financial struggles with the restaurant were a notable subplot of her appearances on Top Chef the following year.
In July 2010, with the business partner Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz of Boka Restaurant Group, Izard opened Girl & the Goat on Randolph Street in the West Loop of Chicago, a 150-seat globally-inflected small-plates restaurant heavy on goat, pig and seasonal vegetables. It was an immediate sensation, winning the James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant in 2011 and remaining one of the hardest reservations in the country for over a decade. She expanded the group into Little Goat Diner (2012, in the same Randolph Street block), Duck Duck Goat (2016, a personal interpretation of Chinese-American food), Cabra (a Peruvian-inspired rooftop restaurant atop the Hoxton hotel, 2019), Sugargoat (a bakery), the wine bar Suzu (2025), and Los Angeles and Washington D.C. outposts of Girl & the Goat opened in 2021 and 2024 respectively. Her product line This Little Goat — sauces, spices and condiments — has been stocked in Whole Foods and Target since 2017.
Bold, generous, globally curious. Izard's cooking moves freely across continents on a single menu — sticky goat empanadas next to wood-grilled Spanish octopus next to a Sichuan-spiced pig face — with the unifying logic that every dish should be cooked over fire, served to share, and built around vegetables and goat or pig rather than the steakhouse cuts of conventional American fine dining.
Flagship 150-seat small-plates restaurant; James Beard Best New Restaurant 2011.
Diner-style breakfast-and-lunch counter opposite Girl & the Goat, opened 2012.
Izard's interpretation of Chinese and Chinese-American cooking, opened 2016.
Peruvian-inspired rooftop restaurant opened 2019; the D.C. outpost followed in 2024.
Her first restaurant; closed before her Top Chef appearance.
These recipes from our database reflect the american cooking tradition that Stephanie works in. They are not direct reproductions of Stephanie's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“If I can roast a goat and make it taste familiar to a steak-eater, I've done my job.”
— Chicago Tribune (2011)
“Being the first woman to win Top Chef shouldn't be a headline. That it still is means we have work to do.”
— James Beard acceptance speech (2013)
Graduates from the University of Michigan with a degree in sociology.
Graduates from the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, Arizona.
Joins Shawn McClain at Spring in Chicago.
Opens Scylla in Lakeview, Chicago, at age 27.
Scylla closes after financial difficulties.
Wins Top Chef Season 4 (Chicago) — the first woman to do so.
Opens Girl & the Goat on Randolph Street with the Boka Restaurant Group.
Girl & the Goat wins the James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant.
Wins the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes.
Wins Iron Chef Gauntlet on Food Network, taking the Iron Chef title.
Opens the Los Angeles Girl & the Goat — her first restaurant outside Chicago.
Yes. She won Top Chef Season 4 (Chicago) in March 2008, becoming the first female champion in the show's history. The show had aired three previous seasons (all won by men) and has had several female winners since.
Scylla, the small Lakeview restaurant Izard opened in 2004, closed in early 2007 after persistent financial difficulties. The closure and her subsequent debts were openly discussed on Top Chef during her run later that year. She has frequently said the failure of Scylla taught her the operational lessons that made Girl & the Goat work.
The Boka Restaurant Group portfolio with Stephanie Izard now includes Girl & the Goat (Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.), Little Goat Diner (Chicago), Duck Duck Goat (Chicago), Cabra (Chicago and D.C.), Sugargoat bakery and the wine bar Suzu — plus the retail line This Little Goat.
Yes. In 2017 she won Iron Chef Gauntlet on Food Network, a single-elimination tournament against seven other chefs including the existing Iron Chefs Bobby Flay and Michael Symon, taking the Iron Chef title.
Izard graduated from the Scottsdale Culinary Institute in 2000 after a sociology degree at the University of Michigan. Her most influential mentor was the Chicago chef Shawn McClain, whom she joined at Spring in 2001.
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