Anya
Season:
22
Executive Chef and owner of Birch and Rye.
Top Chef contestant Season 22
Hometown: Moscow, Russia
Currently living in: San Francisco
Born and raised in Moscow, Anya El-Wattar's culinary education began with her mother teaching her about foraging, preserving, and showing love through cooking.
Anya moved to America at 18, earning a degree from Columbia University before attending the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico to study the healing properties of food.
More recently, Anya opened Birch & Rye, an ode to Russian gastronomy with a contemporary Californian twist. In 2022, Birch & Rye earned a spot in the Michelin Guide and a James Beard Awards semifinalist for Best New Restaurant.
Anya: " I was born in Moscow. I have been in the United States since I was 18 years old. I opened Birch and Rye two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. And I said, nobody's ever going to go to a Russian restaurant now. To my big surprise, it was so well received and won best new restaurant by James Beard Foundation. And that gave me the courage to say, you know what? I can't delete where I was born."
Quickfire Dishes from this Top Chef ™ contestant
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Elimination Dishes from this Top Chef ™ contestant
Quickfire Wins and Losses for this TopChef ™ Contestant
Top Chef ™ is an American reality competition television series which has run since March 2006. The show features professional chefs competing against each other in culinary challenges.
The Top Chef ™ chef-contestants are judged by a counsel of exemplary, world-renowned professional chefs and famous names from the food and wine industry.
The contestants are superb, professional chefs with a huge array of global food skills.
The show is progressive, eliminating one or two chefs each week. Each episode follows a consistent theme with (usually) a Quickfire challenge (short and fun) followed by a more difficult "Elimination Challenge" that is much more intense. The Top Chef ™ Judges Table is where the winners and losers are determined each week.
Elimination Wins and Losses
