Top Chef is an incredibly arduous test of every cooking skill a chef had learned up to that point. To impair taste and smell, two of the most important senses to cook effectively, would seem impossible to succeed on the show. Yet Jackson Kalb was able to do the impossible for most of his time in Houston. The L.A. chef came onto the show having lost most of his smell and taste from a COVID infection months before. He chose to keep this a secret from his competitors, and they had no reason even to question it. That’s because Jackson made a huge showing for himself in the game, winning three challenges and finishing in the top in every Elimination Challenge save one. But his momentum was stopped by a significant roadblock: Restaurant Wars. Jackson put forward a concept that his team was confident in, having just opened his own restaurant. But it was a rough time for the judges at “No Nem,” particularly when it came to Jackson’s front-of-house service (or lack thereof). He fell into the bottom for the first and only time, as the judges felt the ideas and lackluster service fell on Jackson’s shoulders. And in an instant, a frontrunner was shockingly sent out of the competition.
Read on to hear Jackson’s thoughts on his time in the game, and check out Last Chance Kitchen to watch Jackson and other eliminated chefs fight for redemption and a chance to get back into the competition.
What compelled you to apply for Top Chef? I did not apply for Top Chef, they found me on Instagram. That being said, I was very excited to participate.
Let’s start with the fact that you had lost most of your taste and smell due to COVID when filming Top Chef. How did you handle the issue of having to taste your or other chefs’ dishes? I was a complete anxious mess. Everyone kept asking why I was so nervous all of the time. I mostly just went into the competition with very little expectations for myself. I thought, “If I go out first round, at least I got to be on the show.” No matter what, I told myself that I would not use my lack of smell as an excuse. I chose to go on the show, so I made the choice to be conscious of that.
Did any of your competitors have suspicions about what happened before you revealed it to them? I do not recall any of the competitors having any suspicions about what happened. I think we were all so engulfed in our own work that it was hard to pay attention to anything other than what we were putting on the plate.
Despite your limitation, you succeeded up until Restaurant Wars, finishing in the top in 6 out of 7 Elimination Challenges, and winning two plus a Quickfire. Did that success surprise you or affect the way you viewed the competition? My success on the show was mind-blowing, in my opinion. I did not expect to get in the top 3 one single time. I mostly expected to crash and burn, go out first or second, and be quickly forgotten. I have very little self-confidence. I still believe to this day that getting all of those wins was almost 100% luck. The night before Restaurant Wars, I slept about an hour and a half. I was up thinking that I might actually have a shot at winning the entire competition. I had all of these crazy feelings.
“Am I better than I think I am? Is there a chance that my instincts actually are right most of the time? Is everyone else just making mistakes and making me look good? Because my restaurants do well, does that actually make me a good chef, or is there something else there, as I’ve been saying to myself for years?” It’s ironic that I was so concerned about the food I was putting out, but I mostly went out for poor decision-making.
You talk about being a naturally anxious person. How tough was that to manage in a stressful environment like Top Chef? I did not manage my stress well at all, mostly because of the added pressure of hiding this secret from my competitors, which I felt guilty about and having no way of knowing what I was actually serving. I meditate often, and that helps, but when everything feels so extreme, it’s difficult to calm down and truly see things as they are.
Let’s get into Restaurant Wars. To start, what made you decide to serve family-style, despite what the judges would later say about the courses seeming disconnected? Very high-end restaurants in Los Angeles often serve multiple plates of food at the same time. I still believe that is done for a reason, and it works, but not when you are serving Tom Colicchio. I was also worried about the timing of the courses. I think it isn’t fair to say I alone made that decision because I threw the idea out there to consult with the group. But I absolutely did suggest it and stand by it. It was obviously the wrong thing to even attempt to put out there, and at the end of the day, it was the wrong decision to proceed with after I suggested it.
You said you had run Front of House for about 95% of the time your restaurant had been open going into this challenge. Did you approach FoH the same way here as you do there? I’m hoping most people know this about Restaurant Wars, but it is still worth reiterating: It is nothing like opening a real restaurant. It is TV. I can list about 100 examples as to why that is true, but I’m hoping it makes sense without the need for an explanation. For the most part, I did not approach my FoH experience in my restaurants the same way as I did on the show.
The judges had a lot of criticism for the way you handled them, between the fact that you had limited interaction with them and had to be stopped to actually introduce the dishes. What do you think about the choices you made in retrospect? In retrospect, this is again an obviously bad decision. I think that, in a typical restaurant setting, the best guest experiences are ones where the server develops an immediate rapport with their guests and carries that through to the end of the meal. But we are on a TV show. I am mic’d, I am one of the “stars,” and nobody cares about rapport unless it’s me developing that directly to the judges. It was just plain stupidity on my part and is one of the few things I’ve been beating myself up for over the past five months.
What made you decide in the stew room to finally reveal what happened to your smell and taste? And how did the other chefs react? We receive a ton of feedback at Judges’ Table. It typically goes on for hours even though the viewer sees about a minute’s worth of it. We never know for certain who is getting sent home by the time they go into deliberation, but it’s typically pretty easy to guess who it will be. In this case, I was 100% certain it was going to be me. So I figured that moment was my shot to come clean. Honestly, I don’t think anyone cared. From what I remembered, they all seemed happy to be continuing on, which makes perfect sense.
You spoke about losing out on these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities on Top Chef due to your limited senses. But in retrospect, how do you look back on your journey in Houston? I had a great time in Houston and would go back tomorrow if they would let me.
Next, check out our interview with Jo Chan, who was eliminated in Top Chef Houston Episode 7.
