Top Chef x Fantasy Football

Season 22 can be a lot more fun with this new game.

Friends,

I’m not sure you know this part of my history, but many years ago I was a guest judge on Top Chef. Seriously. It was 2007, the third season of the show and it was in Miami, the season where Hung Huynh was the winner. They brought me in for the Restaurant Wars episode; I was a secret restaurant critic planted in the crowd. At the end of the episode, after I’d eaten at both restaurants, Padma and Tom read my reviews out loud at the Judge's Table. It was a thrill to be on the show (though sitting side by side with Padma during hair and makeup was not great for my self-esteem).

Tom, Kristen, and Gail gearing up for Season 22!

All these years later, I still love Top Chef. It’s a show that has stood the test of time, buoyed not only by the contestants' talent and antics, but by the playful chemistry between Gail and Tom, and the recent addition of Kristen Kish.

If you’re a fan too, you’re probably excited for Season 22 starting March 13th, Destination Canada (where Gail is from) that promises new rules around the Restaurant Wars episode. Apparently, the judges are setting "guardrails on overused concepts they don't want to see in hopes of sparking fresh and out-of-the-box ideas" for Restaurant Wars.” Stay tuned for how this will play out.

Now, if you’re a fan, and gearing up to watch, I’ve got just the thing to take this season to the next level – it’s the Top Chef Fantasy League, it’s like Fantasy Sports but with Reality TV (there’s also a Bachelor version!). The Reality Fantasty game, started by Brooklyn mom and entrepreneur Anne Juceam, takes everything you know about sports—the camaraderie, the passion, the obsession, the connected-ness, the sense of being part of a team—and applies it to Reality TV.

With Top Chef Fantasy League, you do what you do with Fantasy Sports — build a league, invite your friends, and earn points each week based on outcome of challenges. The only difference is that in Top Chef Fantasy, you draft contestants instead of athletes, and earn points based on culinary moments instead of touchdowns, but you still compete with friends for bragging rights.

Here’s the breakdown of how it works; Week 1 is for scouting your picks – read up on their bios, watch the first episode, draw up your dream roster. Between Weeks 1 and 2 your League Commissioner organizes the draft to determine which Chefs are on which Team and scoring begins Week 2. Your team earns points based on your Chefs' performance over the course of the season; the Team with the most points at the end of the season wins the League.

Points are distributed like this: 1 point for a Quickfire win, 2 points for Elimination Challenge win, 1 point for surviving an episode, half a point for getting a favorite dish, 1 point for reaching Judge’s table during an elimination challenge, and more.

In previous seasons, folks have been getting into this with super creative team names like Houston, We Have a Prawn, Un-pho-gettable, Let's Get Ready to Rhubarb, Moms Love Gail Simmons, and Boyz II Ramen. Love it!

It’s $10 to sign up and you and the team decide what your stakes are internally. Let me know what you think.

Happy watching!

Andrea