On March 4, the Trump administration began levying 25 percent tariffs on all imports from Canada. (The plan has since been somewhat modified, though Canada has imposed retaliatory tariffs of its own.) Nine days later, the 22nd season of “Top Chef” premiered, dedicated entirely to the culinary and cultural bounty of America’s neighbor to the Great White North. “Destination Canada” was filmed entirely before President Trump re-took office, but amid his repeated calls to make the country a “51st state,” the season now airs in a context where its very premise is unexpectedly political.
“The whole thing feels so outlandish,” longtime judge and native Torontonian Gail Simmons tells Variety. But TV’s most venerable cooking competition must go on, and the current season has much more to offer than its surprising topicality. The competitive field on “Destination Canada” is among the series’ toughest to date; at the season’s halfway point, alumna-turned-host Kristen Kish has already told some serious contenders, like fine dining veteran Corwin Hemming and James Beard nominee Katianna Hong, to pack their knives and go. There’s even been a rare dose of reality-style drama, as when contestant Shuai Wang accidentally tossed teammate Henry Lu’s entire mise en place setup in the trash — removing all the pickles from a dish in a pickle-centric challenge and sending Henry to the bottom.
Ahead of the always-pivotal gauntlet of Restaurant Wars, after which the production will leave its home base of Toronto for other locales across Canada, Simmons, Kish and head judge Tom Colicchio sat down with Variety. The wide-ranging conversation touched on the brewing trade war, why not all great chefs make for great “Top Chef” contestants and how tariffs threaten a restaurant industry already left vulnerable by the pandemic.
Obviously you could not have anticipated this while you were filming, but it was wild to start the premiere and hear you guys say things like “Canada is its own distinct place with its own distinct food,” which have now taken on additional political resonance. What has it been like to watch that happen after you already made this season of TV?
Gail Simmons: I mean, the whole thing feels so outlandish. The fact that we have to explain that in the first place, but also, who would have ever thought that we would be at a point in our relationship between our two nations where there was a reason to defend Canada, and think about trade between our two countries? Because we are each other’s largest trading partners, and it’s such a no-brainer of a conversation, but here we are. You can’t take anything for granted.
I think it was good timing that our show premiered the actual week that tariffs were in discussion. It seems like they’re being held off for a little bit, but we’ll see what transpires. Who knows? It remains to be said that other countries are distinct nations that don’t care as much about America as America maybe cares about itself. And by that, I don’t mean the citizens of America necessarily. I’m digging myself a hole!
Tom Colicchio: It’s indicative of the stupidity coming out of this administration.
Simmons: It’s just like bullies in a playground.
Gail, as the native Canadian here, before all this happened, what were you excited to showcase about Canada to an audience that maybe wasn’t as familiar with it as you are?
Simmons: When we talk about Canada, people will always ask me, “What’s Canadian cuisine?” That was always the question. And the answer is the same as if I were to ask an American that question: “What’s American cuisine?” I don’t think Americans would say that the cuisine of this country is defined by hamburgers and hot dogs, right? It’s so much more complex than that, because this is a very young country that is made up of its Indigenous population, combined with the immigrant pathways that have built this country. Canada is 100 years younger than America. So that remains even more true.
I was just excited to show the differences that make Canada distinct because of the immigrants that built that country. That’s how I grew up: in this incredibly multicultural place that is a combination of its very distinct geography and the people who came to the country to establish it and make it the beautiful wilderness that it is, and cultivate those ingredients through their own lens. There’s just a lot there to wonder at.
Colicchio: Cultural identity, food identity, there’s not one thing. If you look at Canada, the food up in Nova Scotia is very different from food in Vancouver.
Simmons: Right! The same as New York and Dallas.
Colicchio: Ingredients that come from that particular area — the people that settled there, they’re the ones that created those foodways. And so there’s no one thing. It’s all regional. It’s kind of a silly question.
Simmons: Not your question! The question of, what is Canadian cuisine, right? To just be able to show people instead of trying to explain it was such a huge opportunity. I was so proud to show the beauty of Canada, because it is so vast and so changing from coast to coast. And we weren’t just going to one small place. We went from the East Coast all the way to the Rockies, and so we were able to really show a big swath of what makes Canada unique.
Tom and Kristen, was there anything you learned about Canadian food and culture during the season that surprised you?
Kristen Kish: From a competitor’s point of view, before you go on the show, you do a Google. You learn as much as you can about a place. There’s going to be nods to iconic foods that show up as, like, the Top 5 on Google. So you prepare yourself for that. But as I’m delivering the challenges, even the quirky fun facts — “Hawaiian pizza was invented by a Greek man in Canada!” Like, random facts —
Simmons: Canadians consume more pickles than any other nation! I learned a lot.
Kish: It’s fun to discover. I think it’s more curiosity and discovery than it is surprise.
Up to this point on the show, as a viewer, we’ve just seen the Toronto episodes. Is there anything you can tease about what we’re going to see of the rest of Canada?
Simmons: We have an episode or two that highlight the Maritimes, specifically PEI, which is really exciting. I actually had never been to PEI until two summers ago, and was totally blown away by its beauty and its food culture. PEI is a very unique island; it’s a maritime island that really has seafood at the heart of its foodways. We have an episode about Montreal that I think will be hysterical, and then we go to Calgary.
Kish: It was outstanding. Who knew that I would love Calgary so much?
This is the show’s second international season in three years. Was there anything different about doing an international production this time around?
Colicchio: Having to travel back and forth through [Toronto’s] Pearson [Airport]. It took me four hours to get through immigration the first night!
Simmons: It was a different setup, right? When we went to London, we didn’t go with support. We went on our own and made that season ourselves with the location of London. Here, we are making it in collaboration, not with just Destination Canada helping us — and to ease all but Tom’s immigration issues — but also with a co-production. Our producers at Magical Elves worked in tandem with Insight, who produce “Top Chef Canada.” We used their stage. We totally knocked it down, and built our own Top Chef kitchen, but we had that studio. We had their executive producers helping us navigate. So I think from a production standpoint, it was a lot easier. Also, the American dollar is worth more, and Canadians are really nice.
Turning to the gameplay of this season, it feels as a viewer like this season has been extremely tough in terms of sending people home who seem to be strong contenders. You guys are all nodding at me; I was going to ask if it felt that way to you in the moment as well.
Colichio: It was apparent from very early on that this was probably the deepest pool of talent that we’ve seen in any season. Usually there’s about four or five chefs, maybe, that can win this, once you see them starting to work. This one was anybody’s game. But this was very deep. I mean, we were sending home Katianna. We all thought she was gonna — especially knowing her pedigree and seeing some of the dishes that she made, I thought for sure she’d stay around a long time, and it’s just shocking to me that she made that mistake. But it’s my favorite season in terms of talent.
Simmons: I think it also, to your point, speaks to the game play. People ask us all the time, can you tell who’s gonna win from the first couple episodes? And my answer is always no. It’s a game! I can tell you who some of the best chefs are, the strongest cooks, when they’re in their kitchens, cooking their own food. But this is a whole set of different circumstances, and anyone could go home at any time. It doesn’t matter if you have the deepest pedigree or have worked for the fanciest restaurants. On that day, if you make a mistake, all it takes is one dish. And I think this season you really see that play out, because there’s so much talent.
Kish: Obviously, it’s never easy to send anyone home, but when you have to send people home for a good dish, in terms of how that competition plays out, it’s a really great sign. It’s a great marker of understanding the caliber of chefs and how they’re performing. To Gail’s point, a great chef might not be able to perform in this way, but not only do you have great chefs with amazing backgrounds, but you have ones that can also play the game.
Colicchio: Also, chefs that are very creative and they take risks — sometimes, it just doesn’t work. That’s why you work on dishes. I mean, that cucumber seed porridge [from Katianna] was just horrible. It’s a bad idea. And there’s nothing you can do.
Simmons: And it doesn’t mean that she’s not an amazing chef. I actually was really sad to hear this week that her restaurant [Yangban] is closing. I don’t go to their restaurants while the show is on the air. But I was really excited to return to L.A. and eat her food on her terms. And I know I will do so wherever she goes next. But she’s an extraordinary cook. Not everybody can win!
Colicchio: Every chef makes a bad dish. They don’t do it on TV, and if they do, it’s not on the menu. I find that there are certain chefs that have to plan out dishes. I have a friend of mine who’s an extremely talented chef. He’s been working in New York for almost 50 years. But he writes everything out, sketches it out, and then works on the dish, sometimes for a couple weeks before it goes on the menu. Other chefs just shoot from the hip, and they do that really well. One isn’t better than the other. But I think the chef that needs that time to plan is not going to do well on the show, because you have to come up with something right away and stick to it.
Another gameplay question I had is that you have always been very consistent about judging the dish in front of you. But what do you do in a situation like Shuai accidentally trashing Henry’s mise-en-place that’s out of a contestant’s control?
Colicchio: We had no idea that happened.
Kish: He didn’t stand up there and say it.
Simmons: Well, we knew it at Judges’ Table, only after. But we only took it into account in as much as we all agreed that we’d still rather eat his dish as it was. We all agreed that dish, his short rib dish, was still better with his missing mise-en -place than Katianna’s cucumber porridge.
Kish: Because both of them were missing pickles already. So they started on equal footing, and then you looked at the dishes themselves.
Colicchio: The producers know. Obviously, they’re watching everything. When they’re cooking — we’re not watching that.
Simmons: We’re out for lunch!
Colicchio: There are times we can tell a producer knows something and they won’t tell us, but you can tell they know something. Something’s up, but they won’t let us know. Some of it is revealed at Judges’ Table while we’re questioning. But a lot of it, it doesn’t matter.
Kish: So I love watching the show. I love watching the show because I get to see all the behind-the-scenes. I want to know what happened in that kitchen!
Simmons: So much comes out that we have no idea when we’re making it.
This past episode also included a tribute to James Kent, the chef who mentored contestant Vinny Loseto as well as Danny Garcia, last season’s winner. Is he someone any of you had the chance to work with while he was still with us?
Simmons: He was a very close friend.
Colicchio: He participated in the Bocuse D’Or. I was part of the mentoring team. And after watching him work, I offered him a job. He took the NoMad job instead.
Simmons: He was an extraordinary force in New York City restaurants. He was a huge influence and young, far too young. He was the Chef de Cuisine under Daniel Humm at 11 Madison Park and then at the NoMad. He opened his own restaurant, Crown Shy. Saga, which was — is, I should say — just an extraordinary, visionary place. But he also was a New York City kid through and through. He was a graffiti artist. He was a marathon runner. He really was a pillar of the restaurant community.
Colicchio: His grandmother was married to Thelonius Monk!
Simmons: His father was the head concierge at the St. Regis for, like, 30 years. He is sewn into the fabric of New York City, and it was a huge loss for all of us. But he certainly was Danny’s brother and partner in the restaurants, and obviously a huge influence on Vinny.
Kristen, congratulations on publishing your memoir. What was the publishing experience like for you?
Kish: Well, I had a great writer. So first and foremost, you have a really good team around you to make it a little bit easier. It was a process over such a long period of time. It was a slow burn, over three years. I’m just happy that it’s out there and crossing my fingers that it does okay. It’s kind of like when you open a restaurant. You’re like, are people going to show up? That’s how I feel. Are people going to buy it? Are people going to enjoy it?
This book isn’t about me being a chef or hosting television. It’s about me, the things that make me me, that come out in my work. I think it’s a book made for everyone.
This is no longer your first season as host. Are you feeling settled into the role now?
Kish: 100%. I feel more comfortable. Not to say I did not have fun or feel confident in the first season. I think now I have to think less about it, or I’m allowing myself to think less about it, and can just enjoy it and be in the present. I feel I could show up the day before we start filming and I’d be just fine, as opposed to needing to show up four or five days before and get settled.
The national conversation around food right now is centered on inflation and food costs and various memes about egg prices. Is that something you guys see affecting the restaurant industry firsthand?
Colicchio: Yes — my food costs are way up!
Simmons: Margins were never great to begin. The economics of restaurants, especially fine dining establishments, have never been the same margins as a lot of other industries. And now that feels even tighter.
Colicchio: Labor is way up. Food costs are way up. Rents are high. The problem that we have in New York is just finding staff, because it’s so expensive to live in New York that young kids aren’t living there. It’s been difficult. And with the tariffs, I mean, olive oil is going up. Wines are up. And the tariffs haven’t worked their way through the supply chain yet! These are just people raising the price on stuff that’s already here. Once it starts coming through, it’s going to get worse. I think a lot of restaurants are going to close. We’re starting to see that already in New York, and I think out here as well. There’s a lot of restaurants not making it.
Simmons: We’ve learned nothing from the pandemic. I know it’s a different set of circumstances, but it’s so hard to create a sustainable system.
Colicchio: What’s frustrating about this one is that the pandemic — couldn’t help that. Recessions, 9/11, all these things that we’ve been through, it felt like, “OK, we can get together and get through this, and we’re all in it together.” This one? This is a self-inflicted wound. What the fuck are we doing here? You can’t help but be angry at the one person who’s responsible.
CBS recently announced that your former colleague, Padma Lakshmi, is going to be hosting and creating her own food competition show. Have any of you touched base with her about it?
Simmons: I haven’t spoken to her since it came out. I don’t know that many details, but we knew that she was doing it — that she was creating and developing something. That’s all I know.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
