Andy DehnartBravo announced the contestants for Top Chef 15, which will take place in Colorado, including in Denver, Boulder, Telluride, and Aspen. The state paid up to $1 million to get the show to film there.
Interestingly, the show will apparently not leave its host state for the finale, as it typically does. Instead, the finale was filmed at the Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, The Denver Post reported. That event is one of the show’s sponsors, and an appearance at the event is one of its prizes.
The show debuts Dec. 7, but Last Chance Kitchen will debut Nov. 30, and it’s unclear what exactly that means, since Last Chance Kitchen is typically where eliminated chefs battle to return to the competition, which won’t have started yet, of course.
Season 15 was filmed last spring, and is sticking with the same judging panel from last season: Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons, Padma Lakshmi, and Graham Elliot.
Bravo’s “culinary stars” list of guest judges includes 15 people; 13 are men. They include Curtis Stone (ugh why again why), Richard Blais (ugh), Bryan and Michael Voltaggio (ugh), and also some non-ugh people: Naomi Pomeroy, John Besh, Johnny Iuzzini, Wylie Dufresne, Nilou Motamed, and Chris Cosentino.
There will also be local Colorado chefs, including one previous Top Chef winner:
“Troy Guard, Alex Seidel, Hosea Rosenberg (Top Chef Season Five Winner), Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson, Keegan Gerhard, Jen Jasinski (Top Chef Masters Finalist) and Frank Bonanno”
There will, of course, be lots of product placement. Here’s a preview of the product integration, from the press release, which even uses a registered trademark symbols:
“Top Chef season 14 winner Brooke Williamson returns to surprise the cheftestants with a breakfast Quickfire using Nutella®. It’s not going to be easy for these chefs as they go for the gold, traveling around the state in BMW X5 xDrive50i, and battle it out for $125,000 furnished by S.Pellegrino® Sparkling Natural Mineral Water, a feature in FOOD & WINE magazine, a showcase at the annual FOOD & WINE Classic in Aspen and the coveted title of ‘Top Chef.'”
The Top Chef 15 cast
Of the 15 chefs competing this season, three are from New York City; four are from the San Francisco Bay area; and two are from Colorado.
The chefs competing, according to Bravo’s list, are:
- Fatima Ali, New York
- Tyler Anderson, Simsbury, CT
- Carrie Baird, Denver
- Adrienne Cheatham, New York
- Laura Cole, Denali National Park, AK
- Joseph Flamm, Chicago
- Rogelio Garcia, San Francisco
- Tanya Holland, Oakland
- Bruce Kalman, Los Angeles
- Brother Luck, Colorado Springs
- Melissa Perfit, San Francisco
- Tu David Phu, Oakland
- Joe Sasto, Los Angeles
- Christopher Scott, Brooklyn
- Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins, San Diego