‘Top Chef’ Season 21 Winner on Looking ‘Ridiculous’ and Their Plans for the Prize Money

Courtesy of Bravo

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from the season finale of “Top Chef.”

The utensils are down, the knives are packed, and “Top Chef” has crowned its latest winner. Season 21 began in Wisconsin before decamping for the Caribbean, where contestants visited Curaçao and Aruba between cooking meals on a massive cruise ship. In the final episode, Dan Jacobs, Savannah Miller and Danny Garcia were each tasked with cooking the best meal of their lives in the hope that alumna and new host Kristen Kish would declare them the latest Top Chef.

Ultimately, Garcia took the prize. The New Yorker and fine-dining veteran delivered a consistently strong performance, crafting precise and cerebral dishes out of ingredients that could be as humble as a carrot. His four-course finale meal was centered around the theme of first food memories while centering local Caribbean produce, progressing from a leche de tigre ceviche with breadfruit tuile to a piragua, a Puerto Rican shaved-ice dessert that called back to Garcia’s childhood in the five boroughs.

Back home, Garcia works with Saga Hospitality Group, which currently operates two restaurants and a bar inside the skyscraper at 70 Pine Street in Manhattan’s Financial District. Sadly, news broke over the weekend that Saga’s founding partner, chef Jamal “James” Kent, had died of a heart attack at age 45. Garcia remains committed to opening Saga’s next restaurant this fall as executive chef. “We’re going to continue his legacy,” he says.

Kent’s passing makes Garcia’s victory somewhat bittersweet. The “Top Chef” victor nonetheless spoke with Variety about watching himself on TV, his plans for the prize money and why he doesn’t plan on taking his TV cooking style back into professional kitchens.

You mentioned in our earlier conversation that you’d spent some time studying the cuisine of the Caribbean beyond your previous experience before going down for the finale. What were some of the lessons that you took from that time?

There’s a lot of produce. There’s a lot of fish. There’s a lot of products that are just different, that cook differently. They’re just indigenous to their space. So I would go to Little Haiti in Brooklyn, and I met a bunch of people who had different farm stands in different markets, several of which are like, one guy who had a market where he brought produce from his family’s farm in the Caribbean. I would talk to him about what was in season, and he would share different products with me that were going to be in season at the time that we were going to be in Curaçao. I really just kind of just gave myself a masterclass in understanding different ingredients that I had never seen before. 

When it came time to cook the final meal, what made you choose Manny Barella as your sous chef?

Manny and I had gotten along really well throughout the entire season. He’s just someone who cares. He’s someone who is kind. He and I just became homies. I knew, maybe he doesn’t cook food like I do, but that’s not necessarily the box that I needed to be checked. He would help do the things that I needed to do. And he would, at the end of the day, do whatever it took to help me win.

Could you talk about your planning process for the final meal, and how you decided on those four dishes?

For me, it was telling the story — the story was the most important part of my meal. Two challenges prior, I really struggled with telling how I improved in the season. The food is important, but the story on “Top Chef” is just as important. It was really this throughline of first moments, and being able to tell this really personal story of where I started and where I’ve gone.

You had to pivot a couple times during the cook. How do you maintain composure under that type of pressure?

I think as chefs, you have to be able to pivot. You have to be able to — at any given time, whether it’s in your kitchen, or it’s on “Top Chef” — you have to just be ready for things to catch fire and for shit to hit the fan. That’s just the name of the game. Being able to react, being able to stay cool and calm and not fold like a deck of cards, when things go wrong. I would always say, it’s never about if things are gonna go wrong, it’s just about being prepared for when things go wrong. 

Emeril Lagasse was the surprise judge in the finale. What was your preexisting relationship to him and his work?

He’s an OG when it comes to the American food scene, that’s for sure. I remember being a kid and watching him on TV and wilding out, just throwing pans all over the place and spicing things up a bit. But it was cool to meet him. It’s cool to be in his presence, and he’s super kind. He’s an icon in American cuisine.

Your wife, pastry chef Sumaiya Bangee, is also a culinary professional. How has she influenced you in your own cooking life?

Sumaiya’s my partner. That’s my best friend. That’s my confidant. She’s never afraid to check me. She’s never letting my head get too big. She’s always the one to tell me if something is good or not good, without hesitation. So it definitely helped me. She was a soundboard. She’s always the sample for the food that I cook and the decisions that I make.

Out of curiosity, do you watch the actual show as it’s airing live? 

At Crown Shy and 70 Pine, we have a theater in the basement of the building. Every week, the team comes down and we watch. There’s usually, a slow day is like 20 and on a busy day, there’s like 50 of us down in this theater, eating snacks and watching the episode.

Does watching give you new perspective?

No, it’s just giving me cringe moments of listening to the ridiculous shit that I say on TV. Everyone gets a good laugh at the ridiculousness of me constantly running around and goofing on each other. But it’s fun.

I know you’re currently in the process of opening a restaurant. What phase of that are you in currently?

We are opening a new restaurant, Time and Tide, later this fall. With the passing of Jamal, we are taking a brief pause to collect ourselves and grieve properly, and just be here for each other. But we are going to continue his legacy. We’re going to continue building what we were building. We’re going to take Saga Hospitality to all the places that he wanted to take it, and beyond. The expectation is that we open in the fall. The expectation was that this restaurant was going to be this amazing seafood restaurant. And that’s the goal, to keep pushing towards that. Just keep doing all the things that we had planned, bigger and better.

Do you have any specific plans for how you want to use the prize money? 

$250,000, I guess $300,000 if you add everything in — it’s a lot of cash. My wife and I are looking to buy our first home. This is something I consistently said on the season, and that we’re still looking at doing: setting ourselves up for our future and finding our first home and establishing this next part of our journey.

Now that you’ve had some distance, are there any major takeaways from the competition that you’re going to apply in your cooking going forward?

Not necessarily. It’s so different. Competition cooking and restaurant cooking are like apples and oranges. They’re not the same. I walked away with a lot of really great relationships built with other chefs, but I think the food cooked on that show would have never been cooked up in any other place. Like, a watermelon-gooseberry A1 variation sauce? There’s no chance in the real world I would make that sauce. Was it good and delicious? Yeah, for that moment. But it’s just a different style of cooking.

It’s a different time and place. That style of cooking, I’d rather leave it there.

This interview has been edited and condensed.