The 'Top Chef' Season 21 Winner Is Following in His Mentor's Footsteps

Danny Garcia has had a complicated week. At the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen he spoke about his Top Chef Season 21 win, including what brought him on the show, how he remained such a strong competitor, and his exciting plans for the future. The following day, Garcia received the news that his close friend, mentor, and business partner, chef James Kent, died suddenly at the age of 45.

The news shook the restaurant industry. Kent’s kindness and forward-thinking leadership style impacted many lives, Garcia’s in particular. Kent hired Garcia at The NoMad in New York City, his first job after attending culinary school at Johnson & Wales in Providence, Rhode Island. He supported Garcia through the Bocuse d’Or, a biennial worldwide chef competition. He brought Garcia and his now-wife, pastry chef Sumaiya Bangee, together when they worked at Crown Shy. And later this fall, they were going to open a restaurant with Garcia as executive chef.

“His goal was to give everybody around him the limelight to shine,” Garcia said. “He had planted a bunch of seeds, and he took care of them, and wanted to see them grow and flourish. I was fortunate enough to be one of those seeds. We’re going to continue to do everything that he envisioned and planned for us, because that’s what he would have wanted.”

It’s a devastating loss for Garcia and his team at Saga Hospitality, and yet, they will still celebrate the Top Chef win. “[James] would’ve been furious if we weren’t on top of a bar, spraying people down with Champagne,” he said.

In a way, honoring Garcia’s triumph is also a way to honor Kent. According to Garcia, he would not be the chef he is today without Kent’s mentorship. “The food that I cook is because of him. He was able to give me my voice.” And really, it was Garcia’s culinary voice that won him the competition. It was a perspective that was thoughtful and analytical, but daring. One that created restaurant-worthy dishes on the fly, like cranberry-poached sea bass or scallop mousse with zucchini and Green Chartreuse. One that earned him the most prize money ever received in Top Chef history, $303,000. 

For years, Bangee had been encouraging him to apply for the Bravo competition series, but the timing was never right. “Being a chef, you never have time to have breakfast, let alone step out of your restaurant for several weeks just to go compete on a show,” he said. But with the new restaurant in development and Top Chef Season 12 winner Mei Lin’s encouragement, Garcia finally threw his hat into the ring. 

When he found out he would be on the show, Garcia jumped into study mode, watching all 20 seasons of Top Chef backwards (twice for host Kristen Kish’s season) and researching the Wisconsin culinary scene. For every theme or ingredient he thought a challenge would be centered on — be it cranberries, beer, or cheese — Garcia planned two to three ideas, often leaning on dishes he had made in the past. 

“I was going to do things that I knew were delicious,” he said. “There’s a time and place to fly off the seat of your pants, but if I wanted to be there for the longevity of the season, I needed to do things that were in my wheelhouse. It was a marathon.” 

For Garcia, that marathon metaphor is a bit more literal. He is a committed member of the Crown High Run Club (founded by Kent’s wife, Kelly) and, during the filming gap before the finale, ran the New York City Marathon. “I wasn’t going to [run the marathon] because I wasn’t conditioned,” he said. “But literally the night before, I thought, I have to do this because it’s a competition for myself. You have to do this just to prove to yourself that you can.” 

Garcia ran the marathon with his fellow chefs at Saga Hospitality, beat his goal time, and even sprinted the last eight miles. “Mentally, I was like, oh, nothing can stop me.’"

That accomplishment powered Garcia through the real final push, developing and executing the best four-course meal he’s ever made. He knew he wanted to do a seafood menu since his upcoming restaurant will be fish-driven and he could capitalize on the abundance of fresh seafood available in Curaçao (the finale's location). But for Garcia, the trickiest part was deciding on a story with a throughline that would tie his four dishes together. 

By that point in the competition, Garcia knew he could put together a really good plate of food, but when he had to give that food a backstory, he often felt lost. So when it came to the final menu, he thought long and hard about the deeper meaning behind his meal. He started thinking about his appetizer plan — a scallop crudo with leche de tigre — and a memory of Kent came to mind.

“When I interviewed for James Kent fresh out of college, he gave me scallops and told me to make him a dish, and now we’re opening a restaurant,” Garcia said in the finale. After that, more of the courses fell into place. He’d make spiny lobster with salsa macha and chaaza (a Burmese curry and the first thing his wife ever cooked him) and a cantaloupe piragua con leche (a Puerto Rican shaved ice and Garcia’s first interpretation of dessert as a child). It was a story of firsts.

Not only did the cohesive storyline give Garcia a leg up in the finale, so did his stamina. No matter what came his way, he took a breath, kept his cool, and moved forward. Lobsters too chewy? He threw them in a pot and boiled them. Not enough cantaloupe? Pivot and make lemon relish instead. Garcia came off so effortlessly confident, that his final words on Top Chef felt like a surprise. “I think I just put a lot of pressure on myself all the time,” he said through tears. “It feels good to put up the food I want to put up and I’m just proud of myself.”

 This fall, Garcia still plans to become executive chef at Saga Hospitality’s upcoming restaurant, Time and Tide. “It’s going to be our interpretation of a New York City steakhouse, but for seafood,” he said. That means large, beautiful cuts of fish with fun, shareable sides, and an emphasis on sustainability. And although Kent will not be able to see Time and Tide through, Garcia hopes to follow in his footsteps. 

“I think it’s just about leading with grace,” he said. “He gave everybody the time of day. He treated everybody like they were his best friend. If you knew James for five seconds, five days, or five years, he cared about you. He invested in you. And in carrying his legacy, what he wanted was [for us] to remember that it’s not about us. It’s about everybody around us.”