Bravo’s ‘Top Chef Amateurs’ celebrates the home cook
2020 was arguably the year of the home cook, as the pandemic forced the closure of restaurants and made people cook for themselves in order to survive. And it those folks “Top Chef Amateurs” intends to salute. Airing Thursdays on Bravo, the half-hour series brings in home cooks to vie in head-to-head competition, taking on the most iconic challenges from “Top Chef ” history such as the mis-en-place race, the blind taste test and the dreaded risotto challenge, assisted by past “Top Chef ” finalists, frontrunners or fan favorites. The winner of each episode, as determined by a rotating panel of judges, takes home a $5,000 prize. Unlike the original series, these contestants have no professional experience and work in day jobs like teacher, architect and CIA agent, which made for a more relaxed atmosphere that series host Gail Simmons says was a nice departure from the ubercompetitiveness of “Top Chef.” “Because they weren’t just professional cooks, they all were so multidimensional in their abilities and in their backgrounds,” she says. “Incredibly diverse and they’re just people that I would otherwise never get a chance to meet, and they made an impact on me. ... You think about what their lives had been like specifically in this year, and that they were willing to drop it all, leave their families, quarantine for days on end just to spend a day with us, that felt really special. And I really loved the chance to talk with them and meet them and taste their food. It was the personal connection.” But this being a “Top Chef ” show, there is still pressure. None of the contestants here have ever cooked competitively and thus felt the pressures of lights, TV cameras, the clock and competition, just like the pros. Efforts were made to mitigate that by adding a certain amount of levity to the challenges as well as the support of the alumni chefs, who acted as sous chefs for the competitors. “They couldn’t be the person who cooked the main ingredient,” Simmons notes, “but they could walk them through, hold their hand and that was huge, I think, for them and really exciting because these are all people that they know and love and feel confident in their skills and ability. And we also laughed with them. You know, there were a lot of really emotional moments where we just allowed them to be them. And we didn’t try to intimidate them. We gave them an abbreviated version of ‘Judges’ Table’ but it was all with a wink and a smile. “And there’s no losers,” she continues. “There’s a winner and even the person who didn’t win gets a great big hug at the end. And in a year where there were so few hugs in the world and we had all been through the wringer and it was a safe space, that was like a really wonderful moment for everybody.”