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‘Top Chef’ Host Kristen Kish on How Her Fellow Judges and People Around Her ‘Helped Me Get to a Place Where I Felt Like My Best Self’

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CitrixNews Staff
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‘Top Chef’ Host Kristen Kish on How Her Fellow Judges and People Around Her ‘Helped Me Get to a Place Where I Felt Like My Best Self’
Aug 14, 2026 2:10pm PT ‘Top Chef’ Host Kristen Kish on How Her Fellow Judges and People Around Her ‘Helped Me Get to a Place Where I Felt Like My Best Self’

Awards Circuit Podcast: Also on this episode, the Roundtable looks at how many variety series will win an Emmy this year, and other hot races.

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Jazz Tangcay

Artisans Editor

@jazzt See All Kristen Kish at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards held at Peacock Theater on September 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Gilbert Flores/Variety

In another life, Kristen Kish might have been an astronaut. As a young child, she even went to space camp for a day. “I sat in the little simulator, and I touched all the buttons,” she recalls, her face lighting up. “I want to go to adult space camp,” she declares. And maybe, she’ll do it. One day. But for now, Kish is the face and three-time Emmy-nominated host of Bravo’s “Top Chef.”

She was probably destined to be a chef: At age 6, she recalls using her tennis racket as a frying pan and leaves as ingredients. She jokes that she was probably the same age — or perhaps in her teens — when she first managed to cook a chicken breast and stuff it with couscous. It was “bland and dry, and just the most boring bite of food ever. But that was the first time I made edible food.”

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