Top Chef Winner Speaks Out After Nail-Biter Finale: 'There Were Mistakes but… I Was Able to Pivot' (Exclusive)

Warning: This article contains spoilers.

And the winner is…

Bravo A top chef aired the season 21 finale on Wednesday, June 19 and named a new champion: Danny Garcia!

The executive chef of New York’s Saga Hospitality Group — which includes near-bookable restaurants like Saga, Crown Shy and Overstory founded by the late chef James Kent — bested fellow finalists Dan Jacobs and Savannah Miller in an intense finale feast.

Season 21 was filmed mostly in Wisconsin, but the last two episodes took place on a Caribbean cruise ship. Previous A top chef champion Kristin Kish joined the judging panel as a new host (following the departure of Padma Lakshmi) alongside veterans Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons.

In a typical A top chef In its final form, the chefs were tasked with cooking “the best four-course meal of your life,” as Kish explained. “The opportunity to cook whatever you want.”

Dan Jacobs, Amanda Turner, Savannah Miller, Michelle Wallace, Danny Garcia, Manuel “Manny” Barella Lopez.

David Moir/Bravo

But the finalists didn’t have to face the multi-course meal alone. Garcia, Jacobs and Miller had to choose the previously eliminated chef and the selected Manny Barella, Amanda Turner and Michelle Wallace.

Kristen Kish says Padma Lakshmi ‘shaped the path’ she would be on A top chef Host (exclusive)

Kish, Colicchio and Simmons were joined by guest judges, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, Canada’s Top Chef judge David Zilber, Bricia Lopez of Guelaguetza Restaurant, Justin Pichetrungsi of Anajak Thai and Carrie Nahabedian of Brindilla.

Garcia took inspiration from his Dominican and Puerto Rican family when he served scallops and habanero leche de tigre, smoked mussels with plantains and cabbage, lobster with salsa matcha and squash, and his version of “piragua con leche” with melon sorbet and avocado yogurt for dessert.

His dishes were praised, but not without criticism. “I was proud of the food I put in and I was happy with how things turned out,” Garcia told PEOPLE during 2024. Food and wine Classic in Aspen. He admitted that he didn’t think he had “hit a home run. There were mistakes, but I think I was able to turn it around.”

Danny Garcia.

Well done/ Stephanie Diani

The judges were pleased with the creativity of Garcia’s dishes and the way they all worked together. “It’s the perfect end to his progression,” Kish said after eating his dessert.

Jacobs’ four streaks were also praised, but Garcia’s was the best. The two were evenly matched throughout the season.

“I think he and I have been at the top together a lot of times,” Garcia said of Jacobs.

Even their similar names added to the tension as they waited for the winner to be crowned. “You always hear, ‘And Dan…’ you’re like, ‘Oh, shit, that’s Dan.’ Or it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s Danny.’ So announcing the name was always stressful,” he added.

The $250,000 prize goes to a “brownstone fund” of Garcia and his wife, Sumaiya Bangee, Garcia said. “We want to buy a house and really settle down somewhere.” Otherwise, he plans to use the momentum from his A top chef won for his new New York seafood restaurant, Time and Tide.

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“This restaurant is my baby right now. It’s being there for your team, it’s supporting my team. And then when we can figure this out and make it perfect and it can work without me, then there’s that, I can do this and I can do that. But for me this is the most important,” he said.

“It’s a classic New York steakhouse and thinking about it through the lens of a fish restaurant,” he revealed of the concept. “Finding global seafood, finding sustainable seafood, finding seafood that’s in season and giving New Yorkers something they haven’t seen or tasted before and just being the seafood restaurant of my generation.”

Danny Garcia is crowned the winner of ‘Top Chef’ season 21.

C2 photo

Of course, Time and Tide will also have inspiration from his time A top chef.

He said the simplicity was one of Garcia’s biggest takeaways from the series. “The way I’ve been able to cook food on the show is if you put five ingredients on a plate and take two off and it’ll be fine for that plate to be good with three ingredients or even less. I want to cook food where I can just expose the fish and you don’t need to put all the crap on it to make it taste good because it tastes good just the way it is.”

Weather and tide will be his focus after his victory, so don’t let him continue the cooking competition just yet.

“For me, it’s not just like, ‘Okay, great. I want to jump into the 22nd season A top chef or I want to continue Beat Bobby Flay,‘” He said. “But I’m not going to be a chef who nestles in his restaurant and you don’t see or hear me. I think collaboration with other chefs and the community is important.”

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