Scores of its roughly 300 contestants have leveraged the show to open restaurants and grow empires in cities like Chicago, New York, Honolulu, Houston and Miami, and to draw attention and tourists to smaller markets like Boulder, Colo., Athens, Ga., and Paducah, Ky.
Through its 17 years on television, “Top Chef” has reflected the evolution of America’s culinary world, from the foam-crazed molecular gastronomy of the mid-2000s to the tattooed rejection of fine dining’s to the reckonings around #MeToo and workplace equity.
