Kristen Kish's House Rules—Take Off Your Shoes and Tell Her What You're Craving

If you’ve watched the cooking competition show Top Chef in the past decade, you’ve probably seen Kristen Kish. The Korean-born, Michigan-raised chef won her season in Seattle in 2012. Since then, she’s appeared regularly as a guest judge and, most recently, landed the role of Top Chef’s new host. Taking over for the original host, Padma Lakshmi, after 19 seasons, Kish has some big shoes to fill. But her long-running history with the hit reality series, along with starring on the celebrity cooking competition show Fast Foodies, and hosting cooking series such as Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend and Restaurants at the End of the World, for which she also serves as a producer, have her primed as a great new face of the show.

“I didn’t really think about it as what am I going to do to make my mark,” Kish tells Better Homes & Gardens. “I think the beauty of anybody taking on a new role is it will be different by nature because we’re all different human beings and it’s going to be a different experience. My job is to be me, to be honest, and come at it from a point of view that is always with the chef in mind. The show is not anything without amazing professional chefs choosing to come and go through the experience.”

My mom instilled in us to strip the bed and make the new bed every Sunday. When we would go to the movie theaters or a public place, we’d come home and those clothes came off and you put new clothes on. So that’s probably where my rules come from.

Be a good houseguest and a kind human being. That’s all you can really hope for when you allow people into your home, which is such a personal place.

Keep your routine. If I’m somewhere for like a week or less, I don’t really need to settle in that much. Long things