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Kristen Kish

Former ‘Top Chef’ winner to cook at Grand Wailea soon

TV personality and cookbook author Kristen Kish will return to Maui to cook a dinner at Grand Wailea on Sunday, Nov. 19. Cost of $175 per person includes tax, tip, dinner, beverages, signed cookbook and complimentary valet parking. For tickets, visit www.kristenkish.eventbrite.com. Photo courtesy Grand Wailea

What self-respecting foodie doesn’t know Kristen Kish? The former “Top Chef” winner is also a cookbook author and she’s now on a coast-to-coast-and-beyond tour touting her new tome.

Formerly chef de cuisine at Menton in Boston, Mass., she released “Kristen Kish Cooking: Recipes and Techniques,” and it is now available anywhere that books are sold and online, too.

Kish launched her cookbook tour from Boston and will land on Maui last at Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria resort Sunday, Nov. 19 to cook a special dinner to be served with wine pairings.

“She will create a four-course dinner based on the recipes in her new book,” says Executive Chef Ryan Urig, who had hosted Kish and other celebrity culinarians last year during the James Beard Chefs on Tour event at the resort.

“My first and only time on Maui was at that event,” Kish said in a phone interview. “Not only did I fall in love with Maui, we had a great time. It just was a combination of amazing food and great people. I brought my mom and dad. Everything just kind of came together and it felt like family. That’s what Maui was to me, and I’m definitely looking forward to the dinner at Grand Wailea and to celebrate the last stop on the tour.”

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kish was adopted by her family in Kentwood, Mich., at the age of four months.

“She attended Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Chicago, and went on to work for Michelin star chef Guy Martin of Le Grand Vefour in Boston,” says Urig.

“She then worked for Barbara Lynch in Boston, first at Stir, and then at Menton, a Relais Chateaux restaurant which she ran when she was 29,” he adds.

“Kish won season ten of Bravo’s ‘Top Chef’ back in 2012 after originally being eliminated and then cooked her way back to the competition through the show’s online companion series, ‘Last Chance Kitchen,’ he continues. “Most recently, she was co-host of Travel Channel’s ’36 Hours.’ ”

At Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, Grand Wailea’s signature restaurant situated in the middle of a million-gallon saltwater lagoon next to the ocean, she will dazzle with dishes from her book.

For her first course, Kish will do hamachi with sweet onion, bacon, miso and potato paired with Chateaux Gassier rose from Provence, France. She will then do an onion and gruyere tortelloni with chicken brodo paired with J.M. Brocard, “Vau de Vey” Cru chablis from Burgundy.

The entree is braised beef cheek with fine herbs and white miso potato puree that will go with Caymus cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley. Dessert is orange sherbet, goat milk soda and fennel with Humu Humu BRU coffee.

Humuhumunukunukuapua’a is named after the state fish. It reigns as the Best Resort Restaurant on Maui this year in the Best of Maui contest.

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