Throughout Top Chef's fourth season, Stephanie Izard quietly established herself as a leading contender for the prize through refined cooking, strong leadership, an ability to adapt to a wide range of challenges, and an easygoing personality that's rare in a reality competition show. In the season-four finale, which premièred June 11 on Bravo, she beat the two remaining finalists, Richard Blais and Lisa Fernandes, to become the series' first female winner. Previously, she was the executive chef and owner of the now-shuttered Chicago restaurant Scylla, which specialized in seafood with a Mediterranean bent. She's currently scouting the city for a new restaurant space. The morning after the Top Chef finale aired, Izard spoke to The A.V. Club about her culinary and social strategies, the difficulty with desserts, and the differences between onscreen and offscreen at Top Chef.
The A.V. Club: How did you come to get involved in the show?
Stephanie Izard: I've been a longtime fan of the show, and my friend Dale Levitsky was on last season, and he had such a great experience. When [the producers] were looking for people in Chicago, he called me up and asked, "Do you want me to recommend you? Is that something you want to do?" He was definitely instrumental in pushing forth on that.
AVC: As a fan of the show, what sort of strategy did you have going in?
SI: Basically, I wanted to go in and concentrate on the food, and not worry about all the arguing and things that were going to be going on. And I wanted to just try to be myself, which I think I pretty much did. I didn't want to spend the time or the energy talking negatively about other people, because what's the point of that? Just be there to cook for myself and really enjoy the experience and meeting the other people and all of that.
AVC: Were you concerned that that would make you an unappealing reality-show contestant? Being nice and steering clear of drama doesn't necessarily make for great television.
SI: I guess that's true. But at the end of the day, I'm not looking to be a reality star. I'm looking to be a good chef. If I wanted to be all crazy and stuff, I guess I could have tried out for The Real World or something like that.
AVC: Did you have a pretty good sense right away about how your skill-set measured up to the competition?
SI: I think winning the first challenge definitely gave me the advantage of right away feeling pretty confident about my skills. But the first day walking in and talking to people about what they did, it just seemed like they'd found a really talented group of people. Most of them were executive chefs that had owned restaurants, and definitely I figured there'd be some stiff competition.
AVC: In the finale, you said that winning the Top Chef title meant more to you than the $100,000 prize. Why is that?
SI: I just always strive… I'm very competitive. I have a secret mission to be an Olympic champion, and I guess this is as close as I'm going to get. [Laughs.] I wanted to go in and win and prove to myself that I could do it. Of course the $100,000 is great: Everybody has credit-card debts to pay off and all that. But that's not what it was about for me. It was about going in and winning. I just, you know… I like to win things. [Laughs.]
AVC: What do you feel like this title is going to mean for you? Do you have a sense of what the result of it might be, especially as you're looking into opening another restaurant?
SI: I think it'll definitely help me with finding investors, who can see that I'm talented and have what it takes to run a restaurant. As far as Chicago goes, there's so much support right now that I'm pretty sure the first couple months at least are going to be pretty jam-packed, once I get a place opened.
AVC: For the final contest on the show, you lost your sous-chefs after a day's prep, and you all seemed crammed into a very small kitchen. Did those circumstances make it harder for you to do your best work?
SI: Yeah, it was definitely a tough challenge. But going into it, I kind of figured they were gonna pull our sous-chefs, because it wouldn't be right to give us that kind of help for the whole day. So going into it, I made two prep lists, one with Eric [Ripert, of Le Bernardin fame] and one without. Everything we did on Top Chef was a high-pressure situation, so luckily we had sort of learned to deal with that, which probably helped a lot.
AVC: Did it seem to you that Richard was maybe less prepared for that? He seemed a little off his game. How do you account for his flame-out in the finale?
SI: I don't know. I would assume that Richard came to Puerto Rico prepared. Maybe he had too many thoughts going on in his head and wasn't able to sort of get his focus. But I'm sure he spent a lot of time getting ready for Puerto Rico, and I'm sure he got there ready to go. At the end of the day, who knows what happened?
AVC: Does that happen when you're a chef? Do you just have one of those days sometimes, and this one just happened to fall at a particularly bad time for him?
SI: Possibly. I'm sure he could have done better, but we never really know. Of course chefs do have bad days from time to time, and it's very unfortunate if that's what happened to Richard.
AVC: You had some months leading up to the finale. Did you have a pretty solid game-plan in place, or were you just going to kind of roll with it once you got there and saw what you were presented with?
SI: The way I cook is, you'll see me wandering around the grocery store aimlessly, just looking for what looks good. I always just sort of roll with it. You want to use the best produce that's available, and we had no idea what proteins we were going to have, or what we were going to be given. I think going in with too much of a game plan and finding some things weren't available would totally throw me off. I did a lot of cooking before I left, and had dinner parties and gave myself challenges all the time. So I prepared that way, but I definitely didn't have a set menu or anything like that.
AVC: Did you factor in the proteins when you made your sous-chef decision, or were you really intent on going for Ripert regardless?
SI: [Laughs.] Looking back on it, I probably wouldn't have chosen Chef Ripert if I just did it based on the proteins, because there were scallops and pork belly and all these other things out there. I think I was just slightly starstruck, and I was like, "Ooh, how exciting, someone I've always wanted to meet and work with." I'm sure that affected my decision.
AVC: Did he do a pretty good job of cutting that fish for you?
SI: [Laughs.] Yeah. I actually went back the next day and trimmed them down because they were a little big for the bowl they gave us. I felt bad standing over his shoulder, but it's like… of course Eric Ripert knows how to clean fish, but is he gonna cut it the exact way I that want it, you know? I think all of us just wanted it to be our meal and our dishes, and even though we're working with great chefs, they have their own styles and we have ours.
AVC: For the finale, the chefs were allowed to bring in materials that weren't available during the course of the show, like Richard with his liquid nitrogen. Did you take advantage of that?
SI: I didn't bring anything crazy. I brought things like my favorite olives, which I used on the lamb dish, or capers, or things that I actually use in my everyday cooking. I don't use crazy things like liquid nitrogen. I just brought a lot of my favorite ingredients that I thought might not be available when we got there.
AVC: What are your thoughts on molecular gastronomy? Are there areas like that in cooking that interest you, that you'd like to explore more in the future?
SI: There are some things I've definitely played around with after reading about them. There is definitely a place for a lot of those kinds of techniques. There are a couple of chefs in Chicago that have obviously shown there's a way to do it well. It just doesn't really fit with my style. I like to stick to a little more classic. People were making really great food for a really long time before those techniques came along.
AVC: It was a little surprising to see you have so much trouble with the dessert, considering how well your desserts went over in "Restaurant Wars" and "Wedding Wars." What happened? Were you just not anticipating being asked to cook dessert?
SI: The flavor was great on the cake itself, and I had a sauce ready. But in making the dessert, I just sort of second-guessed myself and started making some weird filling, and adding all these components that were just completely unnecessary. I think if I'd kept it a little more straightforward, it could have been a really tasty dessert. Yeah, I don't really know what happened there.
AVC: Why is dessert such a nagging issue for chefs on the show? Is it a discipline that restaurant chefs just aren't accustomed to handling?
SI: I think a lot of chefs can definitely think about great flavor combinations and stuff, but then they'll pass it along to their pastry chef to actually do it in the end. Pastries, you actually do using recipes, and it's got a little more of a science to it. It's something that a lot of times, chefs aren't really involved in coming up with throughout their career, so it makes it a little more challenging.
AVC: As a Chicagoan, did you feel the show represented this city's culinary world well?
SI: I do. They showed Green City Market, and doing the pizza challenge and the Bears, going to the tailgating. They definitely showed Chicago very well. We got to see different neighborhoods and things like that. It's hard to really represent the whole culinary world, because we have such a great scene going on here, but I think this will definitely help open people's eyes to what a great food city we have.
AVC: There were a lot of complaints on our boards from Chicago foodies: "Why isn't Hot Doug's on there?" "Why isn't Charlie Trotter's on there?" "Why did they go to Whole Foods instead of local markets?" Did you ever think, "Why are we here instead of there?"
SI: Yeah, a little bit. As far as Charlie Trotter's goes, I'm guessing that Charlie Trotter didn't want to be on Top Chef. [Laughs.] He's probably a little too cool for school with that one. But they tried their best to represent Chicago, and there are things people think about Chicago—maybe they think about Pizzeria Uno because that's the first one, though the actual really good pizza in Chicago is from smaller places. Once you've lived in Chicago for a while, you find the neat little things that they didn't really show on the show, but I think they did a pretty good job.
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