Top Chef Season 21 Changes: New Host, New Challenges

After 20 periods, “Top Chef” has actually undergone some considerable adjustments. Most especially, previous champ Kristen Kish changes long time host Padma Lakshmi for Season 21, which likewise presents its initial significant spin– a minimum of because the intro of redemption with “Last Chance Kitchen”– to the total gameplay in 20 years.

“It was a great opportunity for us to take a look at what we’ve done for the first two decades and start thinking about the next two decades,” Ryan Flynn, SVP of Present Manufacturing for NBCUniversal Home Entertainment and Streaming, informed IndieWire. “With Padma moving on, it really felt like a great exclamation point” on that particular duration of the franchise business.

With “Top Chef” Season 21, which sees Kish sign up with returning courts Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons for the installation embeded in Wisconsin, there was a possibility to “sort of shake the rhythm a little bit” and “challenge ourselves to step outside of the expected and what we’ve gotten used to,” Flynn stated. Exec manufacturer Casey Kriley included,“That was our starting point to kind of have those creative discussions about where we wanted to go.”

Among things that showed up– from target market research study in addition to comments from the manufacturing group– was their strategy to quickfires. In these, the rivals typically challenged in faster food preparation challenges to win resistance for that week. In time, some cooks utilized that to coastline with the removal challenges, understanding beforehand that they could not go home..

To up the risks, resistance is no more provided throughout the quickfires. Rather, the top chef-testant obtains a prize money, while the champion of the removal difficulty is shielded from going home the adhering to week.

“It’s actually a pretty unique change. I like it,” stated Colicchio, that remembered formerly promoting an advancement to the total competitors. “I’m always saying we’re too focused on who goes home and who loses. It’s, like, the only competition where you focus more on who goes, who loses versus who wins. And so, it was like, ‘If you win something, what do you get?’”

Resembling that belief, Kriley likewise stated that “the elimination challenge has always carried more weight in terms of the show.”

This ended up being “a great way for us to reward chefs along the way and make sure that quickfires still counted,” Flynn stated, while Kriley kept in mind that when it pertained to the gameplay this season,“it shook stuff in two ways.”

The initial is the prize money, which the EP stated “is huge for those chefs” due to the fact that currently, “every episode there’s real rewards.” Furthermore, the layout adjustment “did ratchet up the stakes for those elimination challenges within an episode as well. There’s nowhere for anyone to hide.”

Various other tweaks to the layout seen throughout the season consist of the persisting Dining establishment Battles competitors going “back to basics” after adjusting to chef’s table design layout for periods shot throughout the pandemic and various other advancements seen throughout the years. “The one thing I loved about it — we did go back to basics, but we also eliminated front of the house,” Colicchio stated, keeping in mind that the organizing duty in the difficulty “always bugged me because I always felt that people would go home for a bad front of the house and it’s, like, ‘Top Chef’ not ‘Top Restauranteur’ or ‘Top Service Person.’ I’m glad we got rid of that.”

Furthermore, Colicchio and Simmons sign up with Kish to evaluate quickfires in the last fifty percent of the competitors. Keeping in mind that it was “a change that is really important,” Flynn states “they will be taking into consideration both the quickfire and elimination challenges for their final decision” throughout those later episodes, protecting against cooks from (*21 *)

While Kriley admired the team of approximately 140 individuals for being versatile– “both in the moment, due to unforeseen circumstances as well as holistically, like, how we’re going to shift, whether it’s for the schedule or the location,” she stated– the adjustments really did not come without their missteps.

Especially for Colicchio, evaluating both the quickfires and the removals “got a little tricky because there’s a couple of ways to look at it. I think it sounded good until we started actually getting into it and it was like, ‘This is much more complicated than we think it’s gonna be,’” he clarifies..

Nonetheless, “it added to the discussions at judges’ table in a way that I think maybe we didn’t even realize how much it would,” Flynn stated. Which’s something Colicchio mored than happy to see occur throughout shooting this season. “For a couple of seasons now, I wanted to go back to what we used to do at judges’ table, where it was much more of an interactive conversation, going back and forth,” he stated of having the ability to play off Simmons and Kish, that, he included, “fit right in seamlessly.”

At the end of the day, Kriley stated the adjustments were made with factor to consider of just how much it would certainly service the program, which “is watching chefs compete and their holistic journey of the season.” Contributing To that, Flynn stated that whatever was done “without it feeling like we’re doing a different show because ‘Top Chef’ is still, ultimately, the premier cooking competition show on television.”

“Top Chef: Wisconsin” premieres Wednesday, March 20 at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.