Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, the incredible Kristin Kish is here to talk to us about stepping outside of her comfort zone to take on a new role hosting the hit show Top Chef, and she's going to show us how to level up our cooking game at home.
It's Tuesday, June eleventh.
I'm Simone Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright side from Hello Sunshine, Danielle.
We are a week away from the finale of Top Chef. Next Wednesday, June nineteenth, we are going to see which one of the contestants is crowned the all new Top Chef.
I'm excited because usually the winners of this show go on to do very cool things. They open restaurants. There's been a few Chicago winners, and I love eating at those restaurants when I'm home.
It's a cool show. It's usually the beginning of a lot of great opportunities. And that's exactly what happened to today's guest christ And Kish.
Yeah, she's the new host of Top Chef and since her win a decade ago, she's been a force in the culinary world. She has titles now like cookbook, author, restaurant owner. She hosts several food shows like Iron Chef and Restaurants At the End of the World, She's really doing it.
It's Kristen Kish's world and we're just living in it. She has such an interesting backstory. Danielle So she was born in South Korea and then adopted into a family in Kentwood, Michigan, when she was four months old. And she says her greatest success as a chef happened when she quotes stopped trying to be a chef that impresses everyone and just tried to tell her.
Own story through food.
That's so beautifully said and so oprah of her, Like, I feel like that's always the advice that people finally break through when they let go of other people's expectations. And I think this is also really an opportunity to highlight women chefs and women head chefs. There was a twenty twenty two Industry Insights report that cited forty eight percent of students attending the Culinary Institute are women, but only twenty percent of head chef positions are held by women.
Not that long ago, female executive chefs were much less visible than they are today, and Kristin is one of the women helping to change that.
After the break, Kristin Kish takes us back to the moment when she first found out she got the Top Chef hosting gig, Plus she tells us what Easter egg to look out for in the season finale.
We'll be right back.
We're back, and we're here with Top Chef host Kristin Kish. Kristin, welcome to the bright Side.
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
We have to start by congratulating you on becoming the new host of Top Chef.
This is so major.
Can you take me back to the moment you found out you got the gig?
Where were you? Who did you call? Give us all the details? Yeah, I threw up in my mouth. I panicked, had moments of like kind of like pacing around the house. You're like, is this actually happening? And it's happening. I read the whole thing about Padma leaving on Instagram and found out, just like everyone else, did you know, I
didn't know a second before. I thought that Top Chef was always this thing that was never going to change, like it was indestructible in the way of Tom Gale and Podman will always remain those three people representing the show. And so when I read it, I was like, holy shit, is the showgunna and what is she doing? How are they going to fill that space?
Man?
Whoever has to fill those shoes good luck. And it wasn't until a couple weeks later where I think my manager was like, so would you ever and I said, hmm. I was like no, no, no, no, there's no way. The pressure that one the public and the viewers are going to put on me, I don't want to deal with it. Two, I don't think I can do that. And I don't know what happened. I was in Thailand and I was flying back from Bangkok, flying through Dubai.
I was in Dubai and the airport going through additional security, put my bag on the thing. My manager's like call me. I got all these texts. When I opened up my phone, I was like, oh my god, what's wrong. I start panicking because my initial reaction is like something's wrong. And so I called her and I was like listen. I got like I'm going through security. What she was like, Bravo wants to talk to you. I was like, oh my god. And I knew immediately what it was. I
hung up. I looked at my wife. I said, Bravo wants to meet with me. She looked at me. Oh, I will never forget it. She looked at me, and all of a sudden, it's like she's up on her tiptoes with her arms around my neck. She was like, oh my god. Not because I got the job, because I didn't know yet, but the idea of being considered to be the one to fill those shoes was an honor in and of itself. He gave me a few chills there. That's really cute, Kristen. I love that. It was cool.
Can you tell us the story about how you got on Top Chef as a contestant in the first place.
Certainly was not because I wanted to be. My then boss recommended me because she was invited to go on to the finale on season nine. People are always asking do you have anybody that'd be great for the show, like friends of friends of friends, or you know, word of mouth and recommendations go a long way. And she came back and she gave three names, my name being one of them. She came back and she was like, hey, I gave your name over. I was like, no, you didn't.
I said, I'm not going. I'm not doing it. I'd watched the show. There was not announced to me. That was like, you know what, I could beat all of them, Like, absolutely not, and you're not going to go on there if you don't think you can win. So I was like, you know, I don't think this is for me. It's not the right time. But I don't know. There's a lot of things that came together. And believe in whatever you want to believe in, but I'm a believer of
the universe. Like putting you in a position to have to make a hard choice and testing you in that way, and I was like, you know what, I'll just I'll just take the first calls, like I am in full control and I have the choice, and I just I don't know. I kept saying yes, and all of a sudden, it just was happening, and at a certain point I got excited about it.
Kristin, I am from Chicago and I went to school at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
I am a Midwest girl.
And one of the things that I love about your cooking style is that it's this blend of your Korean and Midwestern sensibilities. When did you start to embrace Korean flavors in your cooking.
My food is the story of my life, and being Korean is something that I never fully embraced until much later on, because as an adoptee, you struggle with identity in your place and what you can own and what
you're allowed to be. And it wasn't until much later on in life where I think also socially and like the world became a little bit more kind in experimentation and giving people grace in that way where I started to do the same thing for myself, and I started dabbling a little bit and more in the technique and the processes of different things in Korean cooking. But you realize that cooking and technique and dishes are far more similar than they are different. So you could pick five
different countries. Each country guarantee has like this homie rice dish or something, or has this great one pot stew or this bray dish or deep fried dish, Like there are all these things that connect all of it, and we just use the environment and our product and our own storytelling to impart individuality and uniqueness to a dish, and so that's what I just started doing. But it came, I don't know, in the past eight years five years
where I started to embrace my Asian American self. Then I could also experiment with it and by way of my food.
So Danielle and I both worked in news for a long time, which means that anyone who has seen the Morning Show loves to ask us how accurate it is. And for a lot of people, watching The Bear is their first into the world of hospitality. So one have you seen it? And two, how does it compare to your experience coming up as a chef?
You know, I gotta say I resisted watching The Bear for a long time, largely in part because I just don't watch a lot of television, and when I watched television, I don't want anything remotely relatable to my real life, and so I was like, you know, I don't really just everyone's talking about it, and then when something becomes so hyped up, I like, I don't want to watch it. And so we finished filming our Milwaukee season, Tom and Gail kept talking about it. I was like, damn it,
I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna watch it, and I did one amazing much more than just a cooking show. Yes, uh two, there are a lot of birds in there that I can relate to. What's most relatable about it? You know, I think it's the pressure. I think it's thing that I found most relatable to a lot of the characters, as everyone trying to do this job and
do it really well. Everyone has their own ideas, their own point of views, their own experiences, and when they all come together, sometimes those things do not work together in order to create a bigger, greater restaurant or you know, experience. And so I could relate to having been the one with ego. I could relate to being amongst a lot of ego, toxic ego, regular ego, all of it. And I could relate to wanting to do such a good
job that you kind of almost self destruct. I mean, the energy in a kitchen is so intense.
I worked as a server for a little while, and I almost shuddered going into the kitchen because everybody is working with so much adrenaline. What do you think you need to become excellent in that kind of environment?
You know, I think it's changed. I think prior to a lot of lights being shown on a lot of toxic behavior in the kitchen. You know, before it was work harder than everyone else. I think now and I was on kind of the cusp of that transition is it's a lesson in human behavior. It's an experiment and putting a lot of different people together and learning how to lead. It's about being led and being open to
being led by someone that you trust. Now I feel like what it takes is you just got to be a good person, willing to learn, willing to take critique and hold yourself accountable, and then as leader side, be willing to learn how other people learn and maneuver amongst all the different personalities in your space.
You mentioned how much it's changed, even in the time that you've been a chef, this idea that we think of women as home chefs but not professional chefs. I still can't wrap my brain around why this is so pervasive in our culture. But what have you noticed is the difference between kitchens run by men and kitchens run by women.
So I've had two very important mentors in my life. One happened to be a male chef and the other one happened to be a female chef. I will say that working for a woman. What that did for me was she was able to understand that we needed more of us on television, that we needed more of us in the forefront, that we needed more of us telling our story. But a woman knows what it felt like.
There is a sense in memory of what that felt like when you are not seen and not given a chance or not provided the same opportunity as those around you, And I feel like that's the difference. I think a man could encourage me to go out there and prove myself and do good and all that stuff, but it's different when someone else goes through it.
I'm so curious what your personal philosophy as a chef is.
You have to be kind but not nice. That's personal philosophy in life. In my kitchen, that's what I tell my chef all the time, because I spent a lot of my career trying to be nice. Don't rock the boat, don't be the aggressive woman. You aren't allowed to say things in the same way that a lot of other people could say things like a man could say something. And so I tried for a long time just to be nice and like make sure everyone got what they
wanted make sure no one was mad. But what ended up happening is that I was losing myself in that, and I was also not putting the business first. And so you're like, wait a second, but this is my business, this is my name, so it's going to come first.
And I will never forget. When I was opening the restaurant, I hired so many talented, skilled people, but a lot of them weren't nice, and they weren't kind, and they took advantage of the fact that it was being too nice, and so I had to reconfigure the way I looked at it, and I was like, well, listen, if you don't like the way I hold you accountable, you may leave. Goodbye,
see you later. If you don't like the fact that I'm going to tell you no or call you out when you do something wrong, or quite frankly, when you're being a bully, which I will not stand for in my kitchen, I'm sorry, Well, yeah, you may go as long as you lead with kindness. I'm not going to ins to you personally or take you down. What you're doing is not about you. It's about a job that
you're doing that we can improve on. And so it's saying no and still being able to tell people that they need to be better.
All right, we have to take a quick break and when we come back, we're getting into culinary hot takes with chef Kristin Kish. We're back with Kristin Kish, Kristin Simone and I love another one of your shows.
It's called Restaurants at the End of the World.
Yes, so you've been to Panama's Cloud Forest Kitchen, a floating restaurant in Brazil, the oldest restaurant in the world in Madrid. And some of these journeys that you take require like a seaplane, a speedboat, walking down a jetty, descending into a tunnel that leads to a restaurant sixteen feet below sea level. Like it is a journey to get there. We want to know which journey was absolutely worth your while.
You know.
I think there was one where I was pretty damn close to the North Pole. It's as close as a commercial plane can get you to the North Pole. And in order to get there, I had to take so many different planes, a boat, and then I got to take a boat out into a glacier, which is magnificent when you see it in person. Oh my god, it is nothing like the greatest documentaries and pictures in Natio can ever do justice to it. It literally took my breath away, and I think those are the life experiences
that I tend to go back to. But you know how memory and time and place and smell and everything that you're seeing is so tied to why something's so amazing. And there was this moment with my wife, Oh yeah, in the Arctic. She wasn't on camera, there's nothing, no reference to her whatsoever, but I just remember looking up, I see her and then I see like the vast nothingness of the Arctic ocean, and it was I don't know, it was just one of those things that I'll never forget.
It was like a true, once in a lifetime experience with someone that I wanted to have it with, and it was it was really special.
Oh my gosh, that's so sweet. I love that story. I want to ask you about your wife. I'm sure that you test out new dishes on her. Maybe does she keep it.
Real with you? Is she like Kristen, I'm not really filing this one. So she helped me open my first restaurant. That's how we met. So when we first met we were not dating. We were simply just She was on the corporate side. I was on the you know, the chef partner side. She will tell me the truth. She will tell me when something doesn't look right or when it just is missing something. She'll tell me when something just doesn't fit really like the vibe of what we're
trying to go for. She tastes everything that I cook. I trust her. Is she kind or nice or neither? She's kind and she says this sucks in a really nice way. No, she'll tell me the truth. And I can see even if she doesn't want to say it, I can see it on her face if she doesn't like something. But you know, we're very open and honest with each other about all of that. When we think something's a good idea or not. Does she cook with you or is she just strictly the taste tester? Taste
test her. So she has like a repertoire of like five recipes from her mother, and I love them so much. But she is a recipe follower. If she doesn't have a recipe, she's not really winging stuff. And when I'm not here, and if I don't feel prep for her and she's home by herself, she will like chuck a piece of salmon in the oven and steam some vegetables and like call it a day. That's it. She's more
of like, that's not bad. She can feed herself. She can feed her Oh, she's one hundred percent capable of feeding herself. I just make it tastes better, that's all amazing.
I'm the opposite of your wife. I call myself the blackout chef. I don't believe in recipes. It's like a philosophical disconnect for me, a spiritual disconnect, and I just just make stuff up in my head.
I think I'm on an episode of Chop.
I'll take the most disparate ingredients from my fridge and I'll just try to make something beautiful from the mess.
But how often does it not work out? Great question?
Now you're getting personal, Kristin, and I feel I feel attacked.
Kristin.
Let's just say her husband is a saint. Okay, he's a saint taste tester. Okay, So, Kristin. I have interviewed a few chefs, and most of the time they tell me, and it's always different, but they tell me that they have something that they keep in their bag at all times. I've heard sea salt, I've heard hot sauce. What is your essential? What do you think we need in our bag at all times? Gummy candy?
Yah? What kind? Any fruity chewy but not too chewy, slightly sour, but an assorted peck So like there's you know, candy that comes in one flavor, one bag with one flavor. I get flavor feindo. Yes, I need a variety pack of something things like a skittle or star Wars that has different flavors. Having snacks can like curb offs a little bit angry and impatience so you can get to the next thing of like actually making food for yourself.
So you know, sure, salt sounds great, hot sauce is wonderful, but if you're hungry, how far is that gonna get you? Candy approached at all times?
Candy? Have you tried the harrowbo All Star mixed bag?
I love that one? Someone is that the one with the berry is so lit?
Yes, it has the cherries, it has those sour worms, it has the coke bottles, it has the gummy bears.
It's like chef's kiss.
And sometimes they're misshapen in the best way, Like you get the reject bag. It's so fun. So is that why you have a gummy bear tattoo?
So I'll give you the story about the gummy bear. I like to get tattoos that mark moments in time. I clearly have a lot of tattoos or a lot of moments in time, some that are you know, are worthy of talking about, and some that just aren't. The gummy bear is one of those things that brings me
a lot of joy. And so the gummy bear is because on set, during all of our cuts and takes at the beginning of the season, like my onset assistant would come on and like he'd always carry candy and his fanny pack, my water bottle and my candy, my chapsticks. So you'd come open up a bag and between takes, I take a couple of pieces that we carry on and then second day, third day, Tom and Gill are like, what is this guy like pulling out candy, and so
they're like, let me have some. And over the season it grew into we'd have candy breaks in between every take, and they started bringing out boards of gummy ca any of different kinds and so Tom and Gale sits to my left at Judge's table. So I got a gummy bear on my left side to represent this. Oh my god, that's really cute. Kristin.
I feel like you need to come out with your own line of high end gummies.
Do we want high end gummies? Do we want just like down and dirty kind of crappy gummies? Like a little bit you know what, you're the chef, you decide, I'll do an all star mix of crappy and high end, so we you know, we cater to the bougie and then the basic perfect.
I feel like in this scenario, I'm the basic, but it's fine, I'll take it.
Oh my goodness. Okay, Danielle and I both have culinary hot takes.
Mine is that? And get ready for this. I think pizza is overrated all pizza. I think that people lean on pizza too often. I find that pizza is the fallback, it's the answer for everything, and.
I don't know that I spiritually connect with that.
I mean, I love pizza, but I don't know that it needs to be the go to takeout food. So listen, I've given you my culinary hot take. I've bared my soul to you. I've been vulnerable Kristin. Now it's your turn. What is your culinary hot take?
Okay, so there's a lot of things that I don't yuck on, like it brings joy to someone else. So I'm like, do you whatever makes you happy? Yeah? I can't. Yeah, somebody's right, however I can't. You know, the restaurants, and this is very specific to like the restaurant scene. Is that the way we consume life. And I feel like sometimes like social media and what our life has become.
It's like pure on maximalist. It's like more and more, and so restaurants, some restaurants have started to adopt this, like cook for trend. Everything's like looks good and everything looks like, oh my god. But you go and you order several different things and everything is high acid, high salt, high spice, high texture. Everything is just high all the time. Problem with that is, but you don't actually taste anything. It's just like sensory overload, which fires in all cylinders
and makes you think you're having a great meal. But the artist subtlety needs to come back in all forms. I don't like the mores more approach.
Okay, I'm gonna get I have a few hot takes at Simone. I ardently disagree with your pizza hot take. As a Chicago in, it's against my religion to agree with that.
That's fine, makes sense.
Hot take number one, ketchup is good on most things, if not everything.
Number two.
Have you ever tried cottage cheese with a baked potato? Unbelievable? Oh yeah, it's like so good.
Also hot take. Okay, hold on, let's go back to this pizza take. Okay, let's go back. Let's talk about it. When we say all pizza, Simone, there are several different kinds. It's different forms. It has the same variety as your all star Aerobo mix. Like when's the last time you had pizza? You know what?
Okay, I think you bring up a good point. The truth is, I'm a bougie bitch and I really like like a coal fired pizza, you know, like I want bubbles in the crust. So I think that I'm I'm a Politan style Yeah exactly, I'm a Neapolitan girl living in a corner slice world. And I think that's where my disappointment comes from.
That's what I just need to eat. More so, Danielle, pizza you do. Yeah. Also to go off Danielle culinary hottech that I did not mention is I don't think deep dish pizzas. What do you consider it a pie? I think that it has more qualities to Lasagnia than it does a pizza. That's actually a great call. It's a casserole. It is a Midwestern pizza. Cast I would agree with you on that. I think we just pissed off a bunch of Chicago by Chicago.
They just left the show, so it's been a minute since You're on the other side of the camera. For a Chef's Challenge, right, and for listeners. On Top Chef, the contestants compete in a quick fire challenge based on a limited number of ingredients, and it forces you to get super creative, which is why I love watching these cooking shows. Now, we've seen lots of people trying to recreate the magic on TikTok with varying degrees of success.
So we think that we could use your help. We need a little Chef's kish, good on good on good one.
So in this game of Chef's Kish, we're gonna throw out some TikTok trends, and you can give us your top chef take on how people can level up their cooking game. So the first one is the Green Goddess dressing that took TikTok by storm. It's made with mayonnaise, yogurt or sour cream, parsley, lemon juice, and that's the basic way. What's your top chef take on a salad dressing that everybody should or could make it home.
Listen, here's the thing with salad dressings. I prefer an a mulcified dressing, which means you have to have an emulsifying agent. So, because the kids on TikTok don't necessarily talk about food in this way, we're the at least the ones that I have I've seen. And so what that does is it takes oil and vinegar, two things that don't want to mix inherently, and allows them to come together in a really creamy emulsified dressing. You can
do that with egg, yolk or mustard. So how about my hot take on salad dressing is that before we start dumping a lot of things in some blenders and calling it addressing, is we learn the basic scientific ways to properly emulsify addressing so you don't use globs of mayonnaise and sour cream. I love this, It's bougie. It's a multifying mn. She hit us with the emulsification, y'all. Straight out the gate, straight out the MF gate.
Okay, people are doing the most with croissants on TikTok right, So we've seen the flattening trend where people are literally flattening them instead of keeping them light and puffy and airy. What is your top chef take on cooking with croissants? Are people committing like high culinary sin here?
What do you think? Yes, yes they are. Here's the thing again, from someone that has made my fair share of croissants that have been a part of the painstaking process. It takes the whole point. I'm gonna get fired up on this one. The whole point of a croissant and the laminating of dough and fat is to get those light, flaky, beautiful layers like layer on layer on layer. It takes days to make a great croissant. Days? And how dare
someone smash that thing? What's the point? I'd rather you take store bought puff pastry and go and smash that because fine, do that, but to take a perfectly beautiful croissant in its purest, most perfect form and take away the whole point of why someone made it in the first place. No, it's bullshit. It's bullshit that pisses me off. Don't do that to a croissant. I'm with you.
We need to respect the way things are made.
I got fired up on that one. Tell us how you really feel, Kristen, tell us how you really feel.
Our producers are writing obsessed, obsessed. Okay, we have one last question for you, because we appreciate you putting on your chef's kish on some of these tasty topics, but we need to dish on the Top Chef finale coming up. What can we expect to see? What were you surprised by anything this season? We won't be mad if you want to break a little news here.
On the bright side, there's not a time I can say about the actual happenings on the season. But what I can talk about is that somewhere in my journey, my personal journey of my wardrobe, because I'm not scared to get in trouble to talk about that love, this is that we level up in the mid drifts, and there are some there are some things that have challenged me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. Imagine having that while you're eating all the food, which is
not the most comfortable thing. So during the Top Chef finale, while we're sitting there dining all together, my pants are undone. So take a little peek and see if you can find it.
Oh my god, you're my people. I thought I was the only person who did that at a restaurant. That's amazing.
If somebody does peep your pants undone and sends you a DM on Instagram, can they win a meal cooked by Kristen.
I will, I will do this, I will, I can. I will officially put this out there now if someone can find it and the producers er it, and someone can screenshout it in the moment that I'm sure it's half a second. You are welcome to come to Arlo Gray and you and a guest can have dinner on me. Wow. Wow, Wow, Simon and I are going to be screenshotting. It's not ready, eyes out. I hope they show it. I really do hope they show it.
Kristin, we could have you here all day. I wish we could. Thank you so much for coming on, Thank you.
For having me. Thank you, Kristin, this was the best. You're the best, the thank you.
Kristin Kish is a chef, restaurant owner, innovator, and the host of Top Chef.
That's it.
For today's show, Tomorrow, we have the original Fresh Prince of bel Air star Tatiana Ali. She's joining us to talk about her latest venture supporting birth workers with her baby yams quilts.
You don't want to miss it.
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Simone Boye. You can find me at Simone Boice on Instagram and TikTok.
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.
That's r O B A Y. We'll see you tomorrow.
Keep looking on the bright side.