by Kristen Wile

As the group’s resident journalist, Top Chef judge Gail Simmons does her research about a city before she touches down to film there. The popular Bravo culinary competition, which brings chefs from around the country to compete in a series of elimination challenges for the title of Top Chef, is currently filming in the Carolinas. Simmons and her showmates have spent several weeks in Charlotte, and the food writer has been exploring the city’s culinary scene by visiting restaurants, traveling, and listening to locals. We sat down with Simmons to talk about how she explores a city’s culinary scene and why a city like Charlotte is more than the awards it has earned.

Unpretentious Palate: It sounds like you’re the one who has been out to eat most in Charlotte.
Gail Simmons: Traditionally, of the 20 years making the show, I am the food reporter. I am the food writer, so I’m always the one who comes in with the research and the lists, then every night Kristen and Tom and our producers are like, ‘OK, where are we eating tonight?’ Also, my family comes in and we’ve done a lot of travel. I end up trying to see as much as I can. I just want to dig as deeply as I can into the place I’m in. The privilege of Top Chef is that half the places we’ve shot over the last 20 years, I’ve never been to before. I didn’t grow up in the United States. Moving here in my early 20s, I moved to New York, which is also very specific, and I didn’t see a lot of America until I came on the show. When we went to Chicago for Season 4, that was my very first time in Chicago. When we went to Denver, Charlotte, Charleston, New Orleans — I’d never been to any of these places until Top Chef took me there.

I’ve done a lot of travel in my life, but growing up when we traveled, we actually traveled abroad or in Canada, where I’m from. The amazing thing [with Top Chef] is that we get to hunker down in a place for 8 weeks and live like a local, and that’s been awesome in every city. I feel like I now have this really personal connection to all these places because I’ve been able to really explore them through their culinary scene. 

UP: You’ve never been to Charlotte before. Before arriving, what did you expect from Charlotte’s culinary scene? 
GS: I knew a couple of chefs here. I certainly spent a lot of time in South Carolina before. I lived in Charleston for both summers of the pandemic, so I had some context — not that they’re the same — and I have chef friends in Asheville. I knew that it’s a mid-sized city, and that there’s a lot of great food culture here. Our team who’ve been wandering around do incredible research and they brought us up to speed before we got here. We always have this big call two months out where we go through all of the cultural and food points and I do research and we send each other lists of chefs and guests and ideas. I had a general grasp on the food influences and the population and the immigrant stories of those who came here and formed the city, but until you’re living in it, you just don’t really know. 

I have to say there’s a lot here. It’s been really great. My family was here for 2 weeks. They just left two days ago, and it was awesome with children. It’s actually a really kid friendly city and a really easy city to navigate that way, and there’s so much to do. 

UP: You mentioned that you have chef friends in Charlotte. Who are some of the folks that you would consider friends?
GS: Jamie Lynch, who’s an alumni of the show. Joe Kindred and his wife Katy, who we’d never met before, but we have a lot of mutual close friends: Ashley Christensen in Raleigh, my friend Chris Shepherd, who’s an incredible chef in Houston. They were all like, ‘Oh, you’re going to Charlotte. You have to talk with Joe. You have to talk with Katy.’ It was like all roads led to Joe and Katy.

In every city we go, because the chef community is so small, we always have what I always call our city guru. When we were in Houston, Chris Shepherd really was just like our guiding light about chefs and restaurants and not just where to eat, but gave us context for the cuisine and the populations and the demographic of the city and his restaurants and the other chefs and community and really brought us in and was so generous to us, and in every city we’ve had like someone like that. Joe and Katy here have been so generous to us with their time. 

UP: Charlotte is in an interesting place right now. We have the Michelin Guide coming soon. We still don’t have a James Beard Award winner. You’ve been in all these different cities and been to restaurants there. Where do you see Charlotte in terms of getting that national recognition from what you’ve seen so far? 
GS: I hate that a city judges itself by those awards. I think those awards are very specific and I know chefs put a lot of weight on them, but I don’t think they define the food culture of the city because I think so much of the food culture is the places that aren’t the fine dining recognized by the Michelin guide. I love the Michelin guide. I’m happy to be going to Greenville and I’ve done a lot of work with the Michelin team over the years, but I just think they’re only one dimension of what our food industry does, and the best places that I find in every city I go to are the small regional cuisine or immigrant cuisine that is lesser known, undiscovered, and that is the real soul of the place.

They’re not necessarily getting recognized by James Beard and Michelin awards. It’s just not the same vibe, right? That’s why I think Top Chef does such a great job of its research and telling those stories because there’s so much more to a city and why a city eats the way it does because of those places. Yes, we need all the fine dining chefs and we have our chefs make incredibly elevated food because that’s the level they’re cooking at. But where we get our inspiration is from the pit masters and the fried chicken joints and the Vietnamese population that settled here and the Appalachian food culture that dates back hundreds of years. There’s so much more. 

In the early years, we started Top Chef going to all the major food scenes, right? San Francisco, Chicago, New York, LA, and on and on. Over the years, people are always saying, ‘How could you be in America and do Top Chef and not go to Atlanta or not go to Philadelphia or all these other big food cities?’ But what I love about Top Chef right now is that it’s really made me realize that there is great food in every corner of the country that is unique and interesting and it tells the stories of the people and the places.

I remember when they told us we were going to Denver and I was like, huh, but we found so much fun stuff. And then they told us we were going to Milwaukee and I was like, 8 weeks in Milwaukee? Honestly, we had the best time and the best meals we ate off camera on our days off were Serbian food and Laotian food and meeting the people behind those restaurants. Here it feels very much the same. I just think that you have to think a little deeper when you think about what makes a great food city. And these days I just don’t think it’s limited to those places with all the awards only. 

UP: I think the chefs care more, and once we get these awards regularly, they’ll be less important. 
GS: It’s a measure of your peers, right? And I get that. I’m not saying they’re not relevant — they do a lot for our industry and our communities. I just think that it doesn’t define the city’s worth in terms of its food scene. For example, we were with a pitmaster the other day, Bryan Furman, who’s award-winning and he’s been named best new chef. He’s raising his own hogs. That’s the stuff I want to know about, right? I’ve known him for a long time, from when he was recognized by Food & Wine, and he’s the first pitmaster to ever get that award, because otherwise again, those are the jobs that no one thought of as elevated or sort of “good enough.” They were not what defines what you think of in those awards, but really, that’s how we want to eat as a culture, and I think that’s where my heart goes more than anything else. 

UP: Where have you been eating in Charlotte?
GS: I loved Customshop, had a lovely date night there. Been to Kindred and Albertine — again, loved them; go to Milkbread every morning. We’ve been to Lan Vang, loved it, can’t wait to go back. Been to Goodyear House, had a lovely meal in the backyard there the other night. Supperland. 

I went two nights ago with Jesse — one of our makeup artists who I’ve worked with for 16 years, she’s amazing but also a dear friend — to Substrate. Awesome wine bar. Then we went to Optimist Hall to Botiwalla for dinner, and it was so delicious and that place is awesome. I’ve been to a lot of food halls in my life and there’s 1,000 in New York and half of them I’m not interested in, but that place is worth exploring. I thought it was really well done. 

I’ve been to Church & Union, had a great meal there. With my kids, we’ve done some barbecue — we went up to Asheville for a day and a night, we went out to Cashiers in the mountains for a long weekend, so we got to do a lot of stuff around there. 

UP: Is there a specific thing you’ve eaten that you will remember from your trip here when you think of Charlotte?
GS: I have to say, Charlotte’s really obsessed with fried chicken and chicken tenders. I can’t believe how it’s kindof impossible for any restaurant to not have them. I kind of knew that, but it’s more than other Southern cities. Maybe the hot chicken sandwich is having a moment in general. 

I’ve had two incredible fish sandwiches. I had an amazing fish sandwich at Botiwalla the other night, and then in Asheville I had the most incredible fish sandwich at Hot Good Fish. So I feel like there’s a fish sandwich thing happening right now in North Carolina that feels important, and I’m here for it. 

I loved the mezze at Albertine. I thought it was so beautiful. That room is spectacular. 

UP: Coming into Charlotte you were informed by the research team and did your own research. Now that you’ve been here and experienced it, if someone in your chef circles asked, ‘What’s Charlotte’s food scene?’ How would you summarize it? 
GS: I would say it’s really based in its Southern heritage. I do think it really embraces the Southern food pathway in a great way. A lot of fried chicken and a lot of pimento cheese and a lot of hush puppies and potato salad. There’s all those kinds of great classics, a lot of collards, that kind of thing. 

Obviously barbecue. I’ve also eaten a lot of barbecue. We’re a big barbecue family anyway — big barbecue lovers. That’s been great, but I do think it has a very global outlook. There’s obviously a lot of influence. There’s a lot of influence from Afro-Caribbean food. There’s a lot of influence from Vietnam and Vietnamese food. There seems to be a lot of Greek food in Charlotte, I’ve noticed. I’ve seen a lot of Greek restaurants and Mediterranean restaurants that I think are really great.