With an impressive 18 seasons under its belt and multiple Emmy award wins, it's clear that Top Chef is still one of the most important and popular culinary challenges shows on television today. Despite dozens of other culinary-based reality shows popping up over the years, like Chopped, Beat Bobby Flay, and Iron Chef, Top Chef has managed to remain at the forefront of people's minds when it comes to the vast world of culinary television. The show's ability to keep things fresh and find talented and interesting chefs to compete has kept fans coming back year after year.
However, the show hasn't been without its' fair share of changes over the years. Although some of these changes have been bigger than others, these small tweaks that are being made each season allow the show to remain interesting and keep fans of the show engaged and on the edge of their seat.
Improved Talent
With a show called Top Chef, most people would expect the contestants to be made up of chefs from some of the finest restaurants in the country, but this wasn't always the case. Although recent seasons have showcased some chefs with very impressive culinary backgrounds, the first season of the show wasn't exactly the cream of the crop.
Rather than focus on professional chefs, the show's first season featured talented home cooks and more sous chefs than later seasons. Of course, these chefs were extremely talented, but many weren't quite up to the level of those that were professionally trained.
Spin-Offs
With the show growing in popularity, producers were quick to capitalize on the show's success. Rather than limit themselves to the original format, numerous spin-offs of the show have aired, which usually somewhat follow the original format but with their own special twist.
Shows like Top Chef Junior, Top Chef Masters, and Top Chef: Just Desserts are just a few of nearly a dozen variations that the show has spawned. There are also multiple shows like Life After Top Chef that focus on previous contestants, without the competition format, for those looking for something with a bit less stress.
A New Host
Newer fans of the show may not realize that foodie favorite Katie Lee Joel was the original host of Top Chef. Although she only hosted for one season, she would return to be a guest judge in later seasons.
Katie has found plenty of success on Food Network and with her multiple cookbooks. Although fans didn't seem to mind Katie in that first season, there's a reason that the host that replaced her, Pa Lakshmi, has been with the show for 17 seasons and is showing no signs of leaving anytime soon.
Number Of Episodes
As with many shows in their inaugural season, Top Chef: San Francisco was the shortest season the show has ever had. With only 12 episodes, it seemed the producers realized that fans were hungry for more and so they expanded the show to 13 episodes the following season.
Subsequent seasons of the show would air for at least 14 episodes, with several seasons going as high as 17, in order to include more extravagant challenges and add more locations for the season's final episodes.
Number Of Contestants
After the first season, the show expanded drastically. Aside from the show increasing the number of episodes, the format was also changed slightly to allow for more contestants, with some episodes eliminating multiple contestants at once, rather than the original one elimination per episode format that the first season followed.
This allowed the show to become less predictable, as there was always plenty of drama to be had in each episode.
The Drama
Compared to the first season, fans may notice that the later seasons of the show have their fair share of drama going on outside of the kitchen. This may be largely in part due to the buzz that a season 2 brawl between contestants started. With the first season of the show focusing almost exclusively on the food, later seasons seemed keen to weave in more storylines between contestants in order to up the drama, especially when two chefs who were at odds with each other had to face off or even team up.
Even though it makes for good fun, fans have been delighted with the show reversing course and steering away from common reality television tropes.
Locations
With the first season of the show taking place in San Francisco, it seemed that the show would continue to pick cities with strong culinary traditions, or those that are well-known culinary hot spots. Although this was the case for several seasons, the show's producers eventually started moving towards locations that might not have been at the forefront of people's minds when it comes to the finest dining in the world.
In locations like Charleston, Kentucky, and most recently Portland, the show is able to show an interesting side to some underrepresented culinary cities.
Guest Judges
The show has had guest judges as early as the show's first episode. However, the caliber of the guest judges has grown tremendously over the years, with judges like the late Anthony Bourdain, celebrity chefs Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, and even those without a culinary background, like astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
The show has continually managed to pull in some of the biggest culinary names in the entire world to guest star and give a unique perspective on the contestant's dishes.