The TV Show That’s Better Than Ever After 23 Seasons

Todd Williamson/Bravo It was around the time the fifth glass in the wine pairing was poured with a sidecar pre-dessert treat of coffee with rum that I turned to Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, sitting to my right, and asked sheepishly, “When you guys are taping, do you drink this much at all your dinners?” She let out a loud laugh and an emphatic, “No!” just as it was time to raise a glass again, this time to Top Chef Season 23 winner Rhoda Magbitang, who just finished serving us a tasting menu of exquisite Filipino food: lumpia, langoustine lugaw, pork belly adobo, oxtail, and a truly gluttonous amount of local specialties—including a surprise “snack” of pig ear skewers.

We’re at the historic James Beard House in New York City’s Greenwich Village, the culinary cathedral where the legendary “dean of American cookery” once lived—legend is that the alcove in the southeast corner of the dining room is where Beard used to sleep with his large bare feet sticking out the window—and is now the venue for career-milestone meals prepared by the country’s greatest chefs.

The honor of serving a dinner at the James Beard House for Bravo and Top Chef producers and executives, local restaurateurs, foundation members, food critics, and, apparently, me (!) is part of the Top Chef winner’s prize package.

Magbitang’s “Island to Island” menu is a celebration of her dramatic, thrilling victory: She made history as the first contestant to win the first two challenges, before being shockingly eliminated soon after, returning to the competition after surviving the Last Chance Kitchen redemption gauntlet, and then winning the whole damn thing.

The occasion is also a well-timed victory lap for the show.

It is once again nominated for t he Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Competition Series—a huge accomplishment for a show in its 23rd season—among four total nods, including one for Kristen Kish as Outstanding Reality Host.

It’s fitting that the drinks were flowing, then.

There was certainly reason to toast.

Especially since, as I learned chatting with judges Simmons, Kish, and Tom Colicchio before the dinner—and gossiping up a storm with Simmons during—there is a reasoned, though still humble, sense among everyone involved in Top Chef that, this year, they really do deserve the trophy.

Top Chef has been nominated in its reality category for every season it’s been on air.

One of the best bits of Emmy Awards trivia is that, after the category was created in 2003, The Amazing Race won the first eight consecutive years, a streak that had some people in the industry wondering what the point of the category was if the same show was just going to keep getting the trophy.