As anticipation builds for this summer’s Top Chef Masters, debuting June 10, you might want to read this New York Times feature checking up on where various Top Chef contestants ended up in the New York restaurant world, after having packed their knives. It’s a mixed bag: some (like season 1 winner Harold Dieterle) have their own restaurants, while fame has been less kind to season 3 winner Hung Huynh:
the offers that rushed in immediately after the show have slowed, and the current economic climate has made investors increasingly averse to risk.
“I’m dying right now,” Mr. Huynh said with a grin to show he was joking, sort of. “I’m not a celebrity chef. A celebrity has money. A chef has a restaurant. I have neither.”
I also discovered that Kiwi chef Mark Simmons from season 4 is the chef at an organic restaurant right around the corner from me. It features, among other things, a weekly pork dinner prepared from a whole pig—one of which you can stare down with Mark right here. (Scroll down if you dare, and if you were not that big a Charlotte’s Web fan.)