YES, TOP CHEF

THIS SPRING, TV’S BIGGEST COOKING COMPETITION RETURNS TO THE MIDWEST FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2008.

- LORI RACKL

Host
KRISTEN KISH

Judge
GAIL SIMMONS

Judge 
TOM COLICCHIO

"THIRTEEN MINUTES, CHEFS!"

The warning kicks the contestants into overdrive. They chop faster. Stir quicker. A camera crew zooms in for closeups of their faces-and the ingredients they just scooped up from the Dane County Farmers' Market in Madison. Ruby red cherries on a cutting board. Bricks of golden cheese. Honey dripping from a spoon. In TV lingo: food porn.

"Hot pan, right behind you!" yells a contestant as she sprints to the oven, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a guy wielding a giant microphone.

Amid the chaos, Kristen Kish watches quietly from the sidelines. She knows what these cooks are going through. She went through it, too, when she was a contestant on Top Chef. Now, 11 years later, the Michigan-raised, Chicagotrained chef sits on the other side of the judges' table, as the new host of the long-running cooking competition.

The influential show has turned contestants into celebrity chefs and spawned multiple spin-offs. Its current season-No. 21!-airs March 20, and Wisconsin stars as the setting. Fifteen Top Chef hopefuls spent six weeks on location last summer, putting their spin on cranberries, fish boils, supper club fare and other Dairy State staples in a bid for the $250,000 prize. Most of the action unfolds in and around Madison and Milwaukee, where an industrial building in south suburban Oak Creek served as the Top Chef set.