This Week on Special Sauce: Gail Simmons' Journey From Personal Assistant to Top Chef Judge

[Photograph: Melanie Dunea]

When I first met her more than a decade ago, Gail Simmons was no television personality: She was the not-at-all-lowly assistant to Jeffrey Steingarten, the feared and revered Vogue food critic. (And she had to survive a ridiculously arduous interview process to get there, which included wine tasting, a pop quiz about sushi, and translating a Ferran Adria text from Spanish and a Pierre Hermé recipe from French.)

There's so much more to Gail than just the charming Top Chef star, but it's fun to hear about how she became a reluctant—but grateful—television personality. On this week's episode of Special Sauce, she also reveals the contents of her desert island fridge and the menu for her last supper (which I desperately want to be invited to). I can promise that both will make your mouth water.

Special Sauce is available on iTunes. You can also find the archive of all our episodes here on Serious Eats and on this RSS feed.

And if you want more Gail, catch the two-night Top Chef premiere event on Wednesday, December 2 and Thursday, December 3 at 10 p.m. on Bravo.

This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.