Top Chef: Kentucky
16 American season of television series

Top Chef: Kentucky is the sixteenth season of the American reality television series Top Chef. Initial details about the season and its cast were revealed on October 18, 2018. The competition was filmed at various locations in Kentucky, including Louisville, Lexington, and Lake Cumberland, with an additional episode set in Nashville, Tennessee. The season finale took place in Macau. Padma Lakshmi returned as host, with Tom Colicchio, Graham Elliot, and Nilou Motamed forming the judging panel. Due to being on maternity leave for the majority of filming, Top Chef regular Gail Simmons did not appear as one of the main judges for the season. Top Chef: Kentucky premiered on December 6, 2018, and concluded on March 14, 2019. In the season finale, Kelsey Barnard Clark was declared the winner over runner-up Sara Bradley. Barnard Clark was also voted Fan Favorite.
Contestants
Fifteen chefs competed in Top Chef: Kentucky.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Top Chef: Kentucky” is 16 American season of television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chef, Kentucky and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Top Chef: Kentucky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.