‘Top Chef’ Portland Will Feature a Rising Star Who Just Opened an All-Day Cafe in D.C.

Season 18 of Top Chef will have just one competitor representing anywhere close to D.C. — Richmond-based chef Brittanny Anderson.

Bravo announced the cast today for the cooking competition’s latest run, which was filmed in Portland, Oregon, and will debut at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 1. Aside from Anderson, there’s only one other chef from a state on the East Coast, Chris Viaud of Milford, New Hampshire. Kwame Onwuachi, the former Top Chef contestant who won a James Beard award for his Afro-Caribbean cooking at Kith/Kin before leaving the Southwest D.C. restaurant last summer, will appear as a judge this season. Edward Lee (Succotash) will also help judge, and José Andrés will make an appearance.

Anderson is best known for the German- and Alpine-influenced cooking style she developed at Richmond restaurants Metzger Bar and Butchery and Brenner Pass. But she stepped into the D.C. food scene in November by opening Leni, retro Euro cafe that serves bratwurst breakfast sandwiches, all-day borscht, and potato rosti topped with avocados inside the Roost food hall in Capitol Hill.

The James Beard Foundation has named Anderson a semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic two times. During the novel coronavirus pandemic, she’s co-hosted a virtual cheese class called Cave Culture and co-founded a seafood distribution company to sell crabs from Northern Neck, Virginia.

• D.C.’s New Euro Cafe Builds Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner on Swiss Potato Cakes [EDC]
• One of Richmond’s Best Chefs Is Bringing a German All-Day Cafe to D.C. [EDC]