A Chicago 'Top Chef' Finalist Talks About Competing on the Popular Show

Get more recipes, food news, and stories at wttw.com/food or by signing up for our Deep Dish newsletter. 
Have a food story or recommendation? Email us at [email protected].

Last night, the Top Chef: Destination Canada finale aired on Bravo, capping a season in which Chicago chefs shone brightly. Bailey Sullivan, executive chef of Monteverde, was one of three finalists invited to cook “the best four-course progressive meal of your career” at Cracco, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Milan, the city where the last two episodes were held. She and her two competitors, Houston’s Tristen Epps and Charleston’s Shuai Wang, were given a grocery budget of €2,000, five hours of prep time, and two hours of cooking time with sous chefs chosen from the pool of previously eliminated chef-testants.

Sullivan had a rocky start in season 22 of the long-running competition, getting “sent home” at the end of episode two. But she salvaged her bid to become “Top Chef” in a segment known as “Last Chance Kitchen,” a fast-paced one-on-one cooking competition judged by Chef Tom Colicchio. Several Top Chef winners (including Chicago’s own Joe Flamm, the chef behind Rose Mary and Il Carciofo) have returned to the competition through Last Chance Kitchen and then won the title. Sullivan found her footing during the intense head-to-heads of Last Chance Kitchen and returned to the main competition in episode five with a refreshed outlook, she says. “Last Chance Kitchen gave me the confidence and clarity to learn that the food that I was cooking [at the beginning] was not the way I want to represent myself. It served as a real wake-up call.”

Milan was a fitting end destination for Sullivan, since she has worked at the Italian-rooted Monteverde for the last eight years under chef and co-owner Sarah Grueneberg, a Top Chef finalist in her own right. (Top Chef often supercharges careers even for contestants who don’t win.) Sullivan started at the acclaimed restaurant as a line cook and worked her way up to her current position as executive chef.

For the Top Chef finale, Sullivan created a menu she called “Giro Stravagante,” Italian for “eccentric turn,” to celebrate her whimsical style in the kitchen. In preparation for the final meal, she created an Excel document of every challenge she had undergone through the season to assess “what the judges liked about me,” she says. From her spreadsheet she determined that vulnerability, quirkiness, and a sense of fun were her strengths in the competition.

She threw on an electric rainbow bandana, grabbed her sous chef (pal Lana Lagomarsini) and set out to create, in Lagomarsini’s words, “the cutest meal ever, girl.” She paired charred octopus with fresh mozzarella cheese and giardiniera in a nod to her Chicago roots, used peak season porcini mushrooms to stuff her handmade pasta, and blew the judges away with her tiramisu-inspired dessert layered with espresso soaked pizzelle cookies and zucca (pumpkin) filling.

The galaxy of Michelin-starred chefs and Top Chef champs in attendance at the finale went wild. Judge Gail Simmons praised her “sunny, happy food” that let her “hipster nonna” style shine through, and Chef Clare Smyth smiled behind the judge’s table, saying, “I think Bailey really brought it home…I can see Bailey’s style quite clearly now.”

Spoiler alert: our Chicago gal did not take the top spot. Tristen Epps won after serving an epic Afro-Caribbean menu. But Sullivan says she is still grateful for the experience in this extra snuggly season.  “I was terrified at first,” she says, but once she got into the rhythm and “learned to embrace the challenge and lean into it,” she loved it. “We all tried to go about things authentically, and with as much kindness and love as possible.”

Sullivan, along with competing Chicago chefs Zubair Mohajir (the chef behind Lilac Tiger and Mirra, who was Epps’ sous chef in the finals) and César Murillo (the chef at North Pond, who was eliminated in the penultimate episode) represent the future leaders in Chicago’s culinary scene. “I’m obsessed with Chicago and can’t imagine being anywhere else,” says Sullivan, a native of suburban La Grange. “I’m so glad we got to share that pride with the world.”