Top Chef to feature Virginia chef as a contestant

The 18th season of Bravo food show Top Chef will debut April 1 — a seemingly fitting Fool’s Day debut to match the year most of America’s chefs have faced.

The long-running chef-competition show — hosted by Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, and Gail Collins — has a reputation for making careers, rocketing some of its better-performing or more likable chefs to local or even national prominence.

And this year, the show will include something the show has rarely featured in its previous 17 seasons: A Virginia-based chef as a contestant.

Joy Crump, executive chef of Fredericksburg restaurant Foode, also repped the state on Top Chef in 2014.

This year, it’ll be Richmond native Brittanny Anderson in the Top Chef apron. Anderson is a Beard-nominated chef and powerhouse restaurateur in Richmond, owner of a trio of acclaimed restaurants in that city and a new food-court cafe in Washington. She’s best known for her take on modern European cuisine, whether at farm-to-table meat palace Metzger Bar and Butchery or Alpine chalet Brenner Pass, which was named our sister publication Style Weekly’s restaurant of the year in 2018.

Anyway, here’s what Bravo had to say about Anderson’s Richmond spots in her chef bio:

“In 2014, Brittanny opened Metzger, which focuses on German-influenced dishes with an emphasis on seasonal and sustainable ingredients. She strives to transform classic cuisine with modern presentation and local ingredients. With the success of Metzger, both locally and nationally, Brittanny has expanded her brand with a second chef-driven modern European restaurant, a seafood distribution business, a curated cheese company, coffee shop, and bar. She currently lives outside of Richmond, with her husband, Kjell, and their dog and two cats.”

No word on whether the cats will make an appearance. But because the show was filmed in Portland, Oregon, last fall, expect to see Portlandia’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, and some talk about wildfires and protests.

Top Chef Season 18 will debut April 1 on Bravo. The trailer, which includes a slow-motion shot of Anderson slapping a big raw bird onto a cutting board, can be viewed below.

Correction, 2:45 p.m.: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Anderson was the first Virginia-based chef in the competition. She was not.