“We were never on time to eat hot food”: how did the Top Chef candidates and chefs eat during the competition?

Top Chef is an adventure where everything happens at a thousand miles an hour. Between the tests that follow one another, the revisions and the pressure, the candidates sometimes don’t always have time to have good meals outside of filming. But then what is their diet during the adventure? Jorick and Clotaire, the two finalists of this season 15, have solved the mystery in a Konbini video.

“We ate badly,” says Jorick, laughing in front of the camera. Clotaire explains that the candidates had “catering” at their disposal, that is to say provision prepared for after the test. The problem ? “We were never on time for hot food” specifies Clotaire. “There was our nanny Manu who prepared meal trays for us and two hours later we had time and we ate something cold.” Indeed, Jorick points out that generally the candidates did not eat their usual meals exactly on time. They didn’t have specific schedules, which was complicated to manage.

The participants had to rely on another alternative, easy to prepare and eat: sandwiches: “The sandwich is the base. It’s a bit of a cook’s meal. We eat so much outside of meals and so quickly that it’s a bit like our own snack.” says Jorick, this year’s winner.

And lots of coffee! If Jorick indicates that he drank at least four per day during the competition, Clotaire admits to him that it was “rather a liter of coffee at least” for him.

Asked by the Huffington Post, Stéphane Rotenberg, presenter of the show, explains that for chefs as for him, the lunch break is also done thanks to catering where a meal is prepared. However, he specifies that the chefs eat less than the candidates as they taste a lot of dishes during filming.

However, for Philippe Etchebest there is no question of ignoring this break: “It’s important to respect the dishes, I care about that. Have my breakfast, my lunch and my dinner. You should know that on Objectif Top Chef I tasted 350 dishes and that didn’t stop me from having my meals next door”.

However, according to Stéphane Rotenberg, Philippe Etchebest is not the most greedy. The champions in this category would actually be Glenn Viel and Paul Pairet: “It’s fascinating what they are able to eat. After a day of filming, they are able to tell us that they are still hungry and invite us to go somewhere or else they go back to the catering to get a sandwich”.

It is therefore difficult to satisfy the appetite of Glenn Viel and Paul Pairet!