‘High Chef’ Season 21 Winner Speaks Out: ‘There Had been Errors’ (Unique)

Warning: This text accommodates spoilers.

And the winner is …

Bravo’s High Chef aired the season 21 finale on Wednesday, June 19 and named a brand new champion: Danny Garcia!

The manager chef at New York’s Saga Hospitality Group — which incorporates nearly-impossible-to-score-reservation-restaurants like Saga, Crown Shy and Overstory based by the late chef James Kent — edged out fellow finalists Dan Jacobs and Savannah Miller in an intense feast within the finale.

Season 21 was filmed principally in Wisconsin however the last two episodes occurred on a Caribbean cruise ship. Former High Chef champ Kristin Kish joined the judges panel as the brand new host (following Padma Lakshmi’s exit) alongside veterans Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons.

In typical High Chef finale kind, the cooks have been tasked with cooking “the very best 4 course meal of your lives,” as defined by Kish. “The chance to prepare dinner no matter you need.”

However the finalists didn’t must face the multi-course meal alone. Garcia, Jacobs and Miller every received to decide on a previously-eradicated cheftestant and chosen Manny Barella, Amanda Turner and Michelle Wallace, respectively. 

Kish, Colicchio and Simmons have been joined by visitor judges, superstar chef Emeril Lagasse, High Chef Canada decide David Zilber, Guelaguetza Restaurant’s Bricia Lopez, Anajak Thai’s Justin Pichetrungsi and Brindille’s Carrie Nahabedian.  

Garcia took inspiration from his Dominican and Puerto Rican household when serving a scallop and habanero leche de tigre, smoked mussels with plantains and cabbage, spiny lobster with salsa matcha and squash and his model of a “piragua con leche” with melon sorbet and avocado yogurt for dessert.

His dishes have been praised, however not with out some hiccups. “I used to be happy with the meals that I put up and I used to be proud of the best way issues have been turning out,” Garcia informed PEOPLE in the course of the 2024 Meals & Wine Basic in Aspen. He admitted that he didn’t suppose he had “hit a house run. There have been errors, however I believe I used to be capable of pivot.”

The judges have been happy with the creativity of Garcia’s dishes and the way all of them labored collectively. “It’s the excellent finish to his development,” Kish stated after consuming his dessert course.

Jacobs’ four-courses have been additionally extremely complimented however Garcia got here out on prime. The 2 have been neck and neck all through the season.

“I believe he and I’ve been within the prime collectively many a occasions,” Garcia stated of Jacobs.

Even their related names added rigidity as they waited for a winner to be topped. “You at all times hear, ‘And Dan—,’ you are like, ‘Oh shit, it is Dan.’ Or it is like, ‘Oh, it is Danny.’ So the announcement of the identify was at all times annoying,” he added.

The $250,000 prize goes in the direction of Garcia and his spouse Sumaiya Bangee’s “brownstone fund,” stated Garcia. “We’re seeking to purchase a house and actually settle into a spot.” In any other case, he’s planning to make use of the momentum from his High Chef win for his new seafood restaurant in N.Y.C., Time and Tide.

“This restaurant is my youngster in the meanwhile. It is being there for my crew, it is supporting my crew. After which as soon as we will determine this out and make it excellent and it might function with out me, then there’s like, I can do that and I can try this. However for me that is a very powerful factor,” he stated.

“It’s taking a traditional N.Y.C. steakhouse and occupied with it by way of the lens of a seafood restaurant,” he revealed of the idea. “Discovering world seafood, discovering sustainable seafood, discovering seafood that is in season and giving New Yorkers one thing that they haven’t seen or tasted earlier than and simply being a seafood restaurant of my era.”

In fact, Time and Tide can even have some inspiration from his time on High Chef. 

Simplicity was one among Garcia’s largest takeaways from the present, he stated. “The way in which I used to be capable of prepare dinner meals on the present is you set 5 components on the plate and take off two and be okay with that plate being good with three components and even much less. I wish to prepare dinner meals the place I simply can showcase the fish and also you needn’t put the entire frilly bullshit on prime of it to make it scrumptious as a result of it is scrumptious as it’s.”

Time and Tide will probably be his focus following his win, so do not besides him to proceed on the culinary competitors circuit simply but.

“For me, it is not identical to, ‘Okay, cool. I wish to soar into Season 22 of High Chef or I wish to go on Beat Bobby Flay,’” he stated. “However I am not going to be the chef that nestles into my restaurant and you do not see and listen to from me. I believe working with different cooks and the group is vital.”