Since Top Chef first premiered, the hit reality show has introduced the world to many memorable chefs, including some who were robbed of winning. Over the show’s history, it featured so many incredibly talented people that Top Chef is widely considered to be one of the best reality shows. However, there has also been negativity about the show, including winners fans didn’t like, chefs who got into legal trouble, mean challenges, and guest judges who weren’t liked.

Similar to Top Chef chefs who’ve gone from loved to hated, some aspects of the show have also become stale. For example, it can easily be argued that Top Chef’s spin-off, Last Chance Kitchen, needs to be reinvented.

Why Top Chef’s Last Chance Kitchen Needs To Be Reworked

Over the last several seasons, Top Chef has arguably become one of the most competitive reality shows on television. After the show initially featured some chefs who were still growing in their careers, Top Chef now casts people who are world-class chefs.

Since Top Chef attracts such top-tier talent, the show does an exceptional job at finding extremely talented winners. One part of the process that helps ensure that the best chef wins is Last Chance Kitchen.

Even though Last Chance Kitchen plays a key role in what makes Top Chef so great, that doesn’t mean it is perfect. In fact, the version of Last Chance Kitchen that fans have now really needs to be reworked.

For several years now, each season of Top Chef has featured the Last Chance Kitchen competition in the background.

During each of those seasons, chefs who survived Last Chance Kitchen have earned their way back into the main competition. That means that Last Chance Kitchen has been one of the most important parts of several seasons of Top Chef.

With that in mind, it begs an obvious question. Does any Top Chef fan care about Last Chance Kitchen as much as they should, considering how much it influences the show?

In March 2025, Top Chef: Destination Canada, the show’s 22nd season, premiered on Bravo. After the first two episodes of the season aired on television, episodes of Last Chance Kitchen were released on YouTube.

The paltry viewership numbers that Last Chance Kitchen gets on YouTube prove that the series desperately needs to be reinvented.

In the twelve days after Season 22’s first episode of Last Chance Kitchen was published on YouTube, only 32,000 people watched it. The second episode of Last Chance Kitchen was watched by only 27,000 people in the five days after it was released.

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In case anyone thinks that the episodes of Top Chef on YouTube just need more time to gain traction, the numbers reveal that really isn’t the case. An episode of Last Chance Kitchen from Season 21 only received 64,000 views in the 11 months since it was published.

In fairness to the team behind Last Chance Kitchen, the show can be watched elsewhere, so the YouTube numbers aren’t the ultimate judgment on how successful it is.

However, YouTube is a wildly successful website that gets a staggering amount of views daily. On top of that, it is safe that some people watch episodes of Last Chance Kitchen on YouTube more than once. In those cases, those people would add to the show’s paltry numbers each time they watch.

It should also be noted that some of the viewers on YouTube won’t have watched the whole video. Worse yet, some of the viewership numbers would have to come from people who accidentally clicked the video.

Even if fans search for Last Chance Kitchen on the r/TopChef subreddit, there isn’t much discussion of the show. While there are several posts that reference Last Chance Kitchen, they aren’t upvoted much, they don’t get many comments, and the show isn’t brought up very often.

Since the r/TopChef subreddit is where many of Top Chef’s most passionate fans go, their relative disinterest in Last Chance Kitchen speaks volume.

How Top Chef’s Last Chance Kitchen Should Be Changed

If the team behind Top Chef wants to rework Last Chance Kitchen, there are several ways they could choose to improve. That said, it seems very clear that something specific about Last Chance Kitchen needs to change.

As of the time of this writing, Last Chance Kitchen simply feels like a low-budget version of Top Chef with the main show’s cast-offs.

After all, Last Chance Kitchen takes place in the Top Chef kitchen, which makes it feel like a poor copy. On top of that, Last Chance Kitchen is judged by Tom Colicchio alone. While Tom Colicchio is respected by Top Chef fans, that makes it feel like only one of the main show’s judges can be bothered to show up for Last Chance Kitchen.

The main way to improve Last Chance Kitchen seems to be simple: make it different from Top Chef.

As it is, the best part of Last Chance Kitchen is having the eliminated players there to comment on the competition. It is the one aspect about Last Chance Kitchen that feels different and more engaging.

Follow that pattern by adding other aspects to Last Chance Kitchen that feel different, and it will be much more likely to feel like it is worth watching for fans.