Gail Simmons

Coming Up

Training at Peter Kump New York Cooking School and Institute of Culinary Education gave Gail Simmons the baseline for a career that kept moving between the kitchen and the page. The early record runs through restaurant reviewer at McGill Tribune in Montreal, intern at Toronto Life in Toronto, writer at National Post, apprentice at Le Cirque in New York City, apprentice at Vong in New York City, assistant to Jeffrey Steingarten at Vogue, and special events manager at Daniel Boulud's restaurant empire. Each stop widened the brief: report on food, work inside it, and learn the standards that shape professional kitchens and food media. Today, Gail Simmons is special projects manager and special projects director of Food & Wine (since 2004) and judge of Top Chef (since 2006). The television work followed the magazine floor, with host at Top Chef: Just Desserts (from 2010), head critic at Top Chef Duels, and co-host at The Feed (2014).

Where They Are Now

At Food & Wine, Gail Simmons was special projects director from 2004 to 2019, a role that sat at the intersection of editorial planning and food-world logistics. Since 2006, she has been a permanent judge on Top Chef, and she also serves as a judge and executive producer on the series. She has also hosted Top Chef Just Desserts. Her book, Talking With My Mouth Full, gathers her life as a professional eater. On the road toward television, she has said, "It never occurred to me to do television until I came to Food & Wine. That was the path that it took."

Signature

Gail's signature dishes include Talking With My Mouth Full, Bringing It Home, and Guesting.

In Their Words “Working as a line cook in a high-end professional kitchen was invaluable to my understanding of the world of cooking and definitely gave me an edge over others at my level trying to build a career in food writing, marketing, etc.” “It never occurred to me to do television until I came to Food & Wine. That was the path that it took.”