Food TV

Top Chef Champ: Life After Reality-TV Is a Challenge

Kevin Sbraga
Kevin Sbraga Photo: Collin Keefe

Top Chef champ Kevin Sbraga could be a little closer to opening his own restaurant. In a piece about the growing number of New Jersey-based chefs who’ve turned up on reality-TV cooking shows and their lives away from spotlight’s glare, the New York Times said Sbraga hoped to have a lease signed “by the end of this month.” As in, today! In the piece Sbraga says he looks forward to getting back into a proper work routine and his life after Top Chef, which has been dominated with appearances and cooking demonstrations, has been a “challenge.” In recent months Sbraga has repeatedly said he’s searching for a space in the Midtown Village area. We reached out to him to see if he has indeed secured a home for his restaurant, but as of posting this, have not heard back.

In the same piece fellow Jerseyan Aaron McCargo, who won season four of Food Network’s “Next Food Network Star” and stars in “Big Daddy’s House,” says he would “politely decline” any offer to compete on another show and has plans to open a restaurant of his own on the Camden waterfront by 2012.
For Cooks Who Compete, the Challenges of Fame [NYT]

Top Chef Champ: Life After Reality-TV Is a Challenge