Top Chef Season 19 is planned to air on Bravo in March. Sarah Welch, a Detroit-based chef, is one of 15 brilliant cooks competing for $250,000 in prize money. She is a partner and executive chef of Marrow restaurant and the co-founder of Mink, a seafood-focused restaurant in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Her businesses are successful because of her culinary abilities, which she attributes to her Jamaican heritage. Welch spent his childhood commuting between Jamaica and Michigan. Despite coming from a family of foodies, her desire to become a chef was sparked by her experience in Jamaica. She told her culinary school, the Institute of Culinary Education, in an interview:
“We grew up with Jamaican youngsters who, unlike our American peers, could cook for themselves as young as eight.” I was awestruck by their abilities to roast fish over open flames and create dumplings out of wheat and water. Those are unquestionably formative experiences for me.”
Sarah Welch was a semi-finalist for the James Beard Foundation.
Welch, Ping Ho (Founder), Amanda Franke, and Nick Ponte are four friends that own the Marrow restaurant. The chef’s dishes propelled the restaurant to a semi-finalist spot in the James Beard Foundation’s Best New Restaurant in the Country category in 2019. Marrow was named one of Eater’s best new restaurants the same year.
Welch was named a semi-finalist for Best Chef in the Great Lakes category by the same charity in 2020. Welch previously worked as an executive chef at Republic and Parks & Rec Diner for two years. She earned a business degree from Michigan State University and a culinary degree from the International Culinary Center (ICC) in New York City. In addition to Marrow, she is a partner at Mink, where her fiancé Cameron Rolka is an executive chef. The pair got engaged in 2020 after dating for more than nine years. Welch’s next significant move in her career will be to compete in Top Chef Season 19.
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When will Season 19 of Top Chef premiere?
The new season of Top Chef will air on Bravo on Thursday, March 3 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (ET). The judges’ panel will include Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, and Gail Simmons, as well as some celebrity chefs who will feature throughout the season. Sam Kang, Evelyn Garcia, Buddha Lo, Jackson Kalb, Nick Wallace, Sarah Welch, Jae Jung, Stephanie Miller, Jo Chan, Ashleigh Shanti, Leia Gaccione, Monique Feybesse, Luke Kolpin, Robert Hernandez, and Damara Brown will be among the 15 candidates on the program.
