Kristin Kish has a lot on her plate. She's previously won season 10 of the Top Chef TV show, has worked as a host on Iron Chef and written a cookbook. This year, she's been working on a show for National Geographic, as well as running a restaurant in Austin, Texas. This week, she's bringing her skills to Wellington restaurant Floriditas for two sold-out nights as part of Wellington On a Plate, where she'll be telling "my life story in five dishes".
Not surprisingly, there's quite a life story for the 39-year-old to tell.
Photo: Kristen Kish, Facebook
“I was adopted at four months old from Korea, I was brought up in Michigan with a very non-Korean family," she tells Kathryn Ryan. "And I think for me, a lot of my storytelling is because that is my life.
“The first four months of my life were certainly impactful, I'm sure and have formed a lot of who I am in personality traits, but it's really by the nurture of how I was brought up that really is the solidifying memories for me.”
It took her a while to find her voice as a chef, she says.
“When I was trying to develop my cooking career for a long time you're a cook, you're an apprentice and you cook other people's food.
“And all of a sudden you go off on your own, like now cook your food. I had a moment where I kind of struggled a little bit. I was like, wait, but what is my food? And I've realised over time, I guess maybe a little bit of maturity and growing up, the only thing separating my food from anybody else is my history, my storytelling.”
In food, everything's been done before, she says.
"The only thing that hasn't been done is my story. So, as soon as I started leaning into that, I was like, OK, now I'm feeling settled.”
Top Chef was a very real reality show, she says.
“I can generally say Top Chef is the realest cooking competition. I know it's television, and it still needs to be produced, but from our experience as the competing chefs, we go in there, we hear the rule, we hear the challenge and we cook and then we're judged. And that's it. “
Being part of the show had a real impact on the way she cooks, she says.
“I learned how to cook under pressure, I learned how to do all that stuff. And I learned how to cook very quickly.”
It also helped her self-confidence.
“I question my ability, I wonder if I'm good enough. And I'm self-conscious, all the things that I feel like a lot of human people … these are traits that we have.
“And so, when I went on there, and it all played out on television, and I had a good reception back to me as a person, not just as a chef, that for me was validation. And the greatest gift that I got from that show whether I had won or not, didn't matter at that point.
“Because what I received from putting myself out there and having people take to me, I guess in a lot of ways or find something relatable, I found confidence in myself.”
She also began to believe that no matter what happened, she had a skill that could sustain her.
“The way I always look at it is yes, I have these television shows, and I get to come to beautiful New Zealand and cook with amazing chefs.
“But if everything just went away, I still have the skill to cook for people. And that for me, as long as I keep that in the heartbeat of what I what I do professionally, I'm okay.”
After her success in Top Chef she took time to process things, she says. But eventually the time felt right to branch out.
“I was like, I'm gonna go try all this other stuff. Now I swore off restaurants for a long time, I don't want to open them, I don't want to work in them. I was able to travel the world and write a cookbook and do some television and sustain an adult lifestyle, like I could pay my bills off of that and everything.
“So, it's like no rush to go into restaurants. And it wasn't till five years later, that I had the opportunity to open up my restaurant in Austin, Texas.”
That restaurant, Arlo Grey, came together when the time was right, she says.
“A lot of things collided, I was ready. It was time for me to have a restaurant where people could come to instead of me going to do one off pop-ups.
“And everything just kind of fit in through that process of opening the restaurant. I also met my wife, which I also don't think it's a coincidence. I think timing and how the universe places you where you need to be is everything.”
Kish has no truck with the celebrity chef name-on-the-door restaurants, she is highly involved in all aspects of Arlo Grey.
“I don't want people to come to my restaurant just because I was on television. I want people coming to my restaurant because they actually really enjoy the food and the service and hospitality.”
The food is grounded in French technique with Italian influences and uses locally-sourced ingredients, she says.
“It is Midwestern Michigan comfort. I don't know if a lot of New Zealanders know what that means. But for me, in my childhood, that meant boxed Hamburger Helper and boxed foods and casseroles and braised meats and meat and potatoes very much - that's my comfort food.”
The cooking is still “elevated in the terms of being technically sound and really well done,” she says.
Her new TV project is Restaurants At The End of the World filmed in places such as Norway, Brazil and Panama.
“It's places that are so far out you fly into maybe the main airport, but then you take a boat and then you take another plane; the point is to go somewhere where it's kind of cut off from the supply chain to see who these people are, how they're cooking, what they cook and how they basically sustain what their restaurant is.”
