Chef Gregory Gourdet Talks ‘Top Chef,’ Playing Through Pain, And Restaurants During COVID

This season’s Top Chef saw one chef dominate for most of the competition: Chef Gregory Gourdet. A man so effortlessly cool he can pull off a fringed leather motorcycle vest. Especially following Restaurant Wars — Top Chef‘s signature challenge, in which chefs design, open, and start serving food in their own pop-up restaurants in a 48 hour span — in which Chef Gregory’s Kann, a Haitian food concept, handily defeated Chef Kevin Gillespie’s Country Captain, it looked like Chef Gregory might cruise to the finale without even breaking a sweat.

Instead, he showed up to Italy suffering back spasms, gritted his teeth through an aperitivo-based quickfire challenge, and ended up going home for a truffle dish that didn’t taste like truffles. His run in this season, made up of all-stars from past seasons, ended up being a lot like his initial run on season 12, in which he at one point won four challenges in a row but ended up losing in the finale to Mei Lin. Now, fellow season 12 contestant Melissa King looks poised to win this season.

Of course, there’s TV and then there’s life, and for as much as we pretend cooking is sports for entertainment purposes, likely most people’s takeaway from Gregory Gourdet on Top Chef isn’t “this guy can’t close the deal” but rather “that guy’s food looks good and I would like to eat it.” Which is why even established and successful chefs still submit themselves to the grueling Top Chef process.

As with many chefs, Gourdet’s success has been a journey. Now 10 years sober, he grew up in Queens, moved west for college, and then returned to New York to attend CIA and work for Jean-Georges Vongrichten. From there he went to Portland, where he’s planned pan-Asian fare as the executive chef for Departures for the past 10 years. After cooking modern French, then pan-Asian, he’s now attempting to incorporate the flavors he grew up eating for a Haitian food concept similar to Kann (I ate there; it was wonderful). He also just finished a cookbook, reflecting his passion for healthy food and global cuisine.