2 More 'Top Chef' Restaurants Shutter
It's been a rough week
Fresh off the news that Top Chef season 13 contestant Kwame Onwuachi's restaurant, The Shaw Bijou, abruptly shuttered last weekend (which even the chef wasn't expecting), word comes of two additional Top Chef alum closings. Sbraga and The Fat Ham, a pair of Philadelphia restaurants opened by season seven winner Kevin Sbraga, suddenly closed up shop Tuesday night, Philadelphia Magazine reports.
And these aren't the first shutters for Sbraga. In 2016, he terminated his Florida restaurant, Sbraga & Company, and in 2015, his Juniper Commons closed after a mere six months.
Other "cheftestants," including season one winner Harold Dieterle, have closed restaurants in recent years (though the chef did recently return to the NYC dining scene with his Chopt salad collaboration). And Ilan Hall, whose Brooklyn outpost The Gorbals morphed into Esh, has also ended the restaurant's run.
Meanwhile, Top Chef alums like Chicago's Stephanie Izard, whose Girl & the Goat and Duck Duck Goat are perennially packed, and the Voltaggio brothers, who just opened their first joint venture outside of D.C., have been faring exceptionally well.