Five minutes with Stephanie Izard: Top Chef Chicago winner

Though she was surely battling a hangover (see our champagne-fueled, on-the-scene report from the Top Chef party at Room 21), hometown hero Stephanie Izard got out of bed this morning and called me to talk about her Top Chef win anyway. Here’s an excerpt from that conversation:

TOC: I heard you were at Cans last night.
Stephanie Izard: I was.

TOC: So my first question obviously has to be: What the hell were you doing at Cans?
Stephanie Izard: [Laughs] You know, Valerie’s friend is actually the owner, and she’s been watching it there every week and has been nice enough to show it on the TVs. I was like “Hey, they’re going to have it on TV,” so I told a bunch of old friends to go there, and it was actually a really good time.

TOC: Do you think it’s hard for Valerie to watch the show?
Stephanie Izard: You know, Valerie said to me the day before we went, she’s like "I’m along for the ride, Steph. Let’s go.” I think all along she wanted just to be there for me, you know, to help me sort of bring home the title. She just seemed really proud and we’re really good friends so it was a lot of fun to watch it with her.

TOC: When she left the house, did things get palpably harder for you, because you didn’t have an old friend in the house?
Stephanie Izard: It was definitely nice to have somebody there at first. It made it that much more comfortable for us meeting everybody else. But after a few days in the house we got to know everybody real quick. So at that point I had made a lot of new friends and I think I was all right.

TOC: I wanted to ask you about living in that house. Is it nicer digs than you have normally?
Stephanie Izard: Yeah, I mean, aside from the bunk beds. It was a pretty sweet house…beautiful house, real cute neighborhood…but, um, yeah, I definitely don’t own a 1.5 million dollar house…

TOC: Not yet. But what I hear is that winners of Top Chef get that within a few weeks.
Stephanie Izard: Awesome.

TOC: So, I’m sure you know, but Bravo announced that they’re doing Top Chef Junior, a Top Chef for teens.
Stephanie Izard: Oh really? I didn’t know that.

TOC: What do you think about that?
Stephanie Izard: That’s weird.

TOC: Those were my sentiments, too.
Stephanie Izard: I’ve been saying for the past few days though that I was really surprised at how many younger people watch the show. I got an email from a 16-year-old the other day who said “Stephanie I kind of think I want to go to culinary school, what should I do?” It’s really interesting how many younger people seem to be into cooking…but I’m not quite sure about a bunch of teenagers with hot things and knives running around…

TOC: Hair seems to be a big deal on Top Chef, with Lisa getting her hair cut short, etc. And I just wanted to know: How instrumental do you think Richard’s Mohawk was to his losing?
Stephanie Izard: I don’t know. Richard’s hair is definitely representative of him. You know, it’s got that sort of young, um, young at heart look, I guess…

TOC: Yeah, he’s 37.
Stephanie Izard: Yeah, young at heart. I’m pretty sure his Mohawk didn’t make him lose Top Chef.

TOC: What about your curls? Did they help in any way?
Stephanie Izard: [Laughs uncomfortably.]

TOC: Okay, next question: Would you do TV again?
Stephanie Izard: I would. I don’t know if I’d put myself into another crazy reality show where there’s competitions every day. But, you know, just going on TV in other ways. We all have a lot of training being in front of the camera. All of us are pretty good at it at this point.

TOC: Are you talking hypothetically or are you definitely attempting to go back on TV soon?
Stephanie Izard: I’m on the fence about it a little bit. I’m going to wait and see what opportunities come up…. I wouldn’t push to try to be the next Rachael Ray or something like that. At the same time, if I was able to go on and do something with traveling and cooking and things like that, I’d be all over it.

TOC: In other interviews you’ve talked about opening a restaurant close to downtown. But when you closed Scylla, the rumors—or at least what I heard—was that you were sick of managing a restaurant. So what changed?
Stephanie Izard: I still feel the exact same way. Basically what I need to do with the next place is get more of a management staff in place. And I just need to not take on every detail of the restaurant by myself. You know, have the right people in place so that I can be a little less stressed out, which would be good, and be able to enjoy just working with the food.

TOC: Are you going to put banana scallops on the menu?
Stephanie Izard: Errrr, no.

TOC: What about peanut butter mashed potatoes?
Stephanie Izard: Probably not. Although I do like peanut butter and mashed potatoes. I didn’t get to try those that day. It scares me slightly.