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How Top Chef Contestants Maintain Their Anonymity

Fake emails, phony vacations, and elaborate lies to family and friends are apparently a Top Chef rite of passage.

Allecia Vermillion
Author: Allecia Vermillion
Less than 1 min.read

 

 The November 7 premiere of Top Chef Seattle is six weeks away, and Jessica Sidman, the Young and Hungry columnist at Washington CityPaper in D.C. wrote an interesting piece about how chef contestants cover their tracks when they disappear for six weeks to tape the show. 

Spike Mendelsohn told everyone he was traveling in Vietnam and even queued up a batch of fake emails to send to friends and family. Though in this age, the lack of ubiquitous Instagrams, Tweets, and Foursquare checkins might raise suspicion. Bryan Voltaggio compares the sequestering to being in jail.

Chefs on the show surrender their phone, wallet, license, and internet access. Knife-packers must wait out the rest of the taping in a “holding house.” And as we learned earlier this summer, a “ranger” watches over cast members wherever they go.

Seattle may be hosting the tenth season, but none of our local chefs and cooks had any mysterious absences to explain–none of the contestants is a local.

 




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Allecia Vermillion
Allecia Vermillion
Allecia Vermillion has spent a decade at Seattle Met, arriving as food and drink editor, and expanding her role over the years. She served as the magazine’s editor in chief until moving into a newly created executive editor role in 2021. She spearheads Seattle Met’s food and drink coverage and oversees home design content. Allecia’s writing has earned her multiple journalism awards and two James Beard Award nominations over the years. A native of Portland, Oregon, Allecia began her writing life as a newspaper reporter in the Chicago suburbs before making a grateful return to the Pacific Northwest. She has an English degree from Washington University (no, the one in St. Louis) and a masters in journalism from Northwestern University. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two children.