‘Top Chef’ Kevin Gillespie’s Scottish Restaurant Would Make His Ancestors Proud

Tinfoil Swans Podcast

On this episode

There’s a good chance you know chef and author Kevin Gillespie from his fan-favorite stint on Season 6 of Top Chef or his return on the All Stars Season 20, but the Georgia native’s talent can’t be reduced to the small screen. His new Atlanta restaurant, Nàdair, is a full-throated love letter to his Scottish heritage — something Gillespie’s family was made to feel ashamed of for generations. But in the aftermath of renal cancer, doctors begging him to retire, and the loss of multiple family members in the past year, he’s put life on fast-forward and opened the restaurant that would make his ancestors proud. Gillespie gets raw and real about a childhood split between Appalachia and aristocracy, how facing death has changed his relationship to fear, and what the next chapter holds for him — no matter how long it lasts.

Meet our guest

Kevin Gillespie is the chef-owner of Gunshow and Nàdair in Atlanta, Georgia, and the author of two cookbooks, Fire in My Belly and Pure Pork Awesomeness. He is the co-founder of the Defend Southern Food Foundation, which provides meals for hungry families in the area. Gillespie was a finalist and voted fan favorite on Season 6 of Top Chef and was a finalist on Top Chef All-Stars. He was a 2022 James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, and a 2015 and 2017 semifinalist and 2016 finalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South, as well as a semifinalist for the Rising Star Chef of the Year award.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine’s podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Highlights from the episode

On show and tell in rural America

“In fifth grade I was already very squarely aware of the fact that I was going to be a professional chef. We had to do a public presentation — essentially teaching kids the confidence of speaking publicly. I decided that I would demonstrate to my classmates how to make Crêpes Suzette. In third grade, we had to teach our classmates a skill that we had, and my school allowed me to show everyone how to clean a gun. My parents brought my deer hunting rifle to school, and I showed everyone how you properly clean a gun. And then in sixth grade. I did my science fair project on how to brew beer.”

On growing up between two worlds

“My mom’s mom was very much a world traveler gourmand — so that’s where the crêpe thing came in. When I would be with that set of grandparents, I would get to travel all over the world and eat food from all different places. I would summer at one of their homes in New England each year. And then I would come back home to little Locust Grove, Georgia, and I would live next door to the Gillespie family, which were all just a plumber, a carpenter, my dad worked on lawnmowers. It’s just a very different world, and they didn’t really blend with each other. Weirdly enough, I feel very connected to the show Gilmore Girls, I feel like that really sums up my life, you know?”

On the power of persistence

“I decided well, I’ve got to go get a job at the best place I possibly could. And at the time in Atlanta, that was either Günter Seeger or it was the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead. So I went to the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, and I had my knives, and I started working. Then someone was like, ‘Who are you?’ And I was like, ‘Hey, I’m Kevin.’ And then eventually  about two hours into the first day they realized that I don’t work there.

They were like, ‘You have to leave.’ So then I came back the next day and, so I was there for about half an hour the next day before they were like, ‘You have to leave.’ So then I came back on the third day. And they were like, ‘Well, are you just going to keep coming?’ And I was like, ‘Yes.'”

On pride

“I grew up in a household that was very proudly Scottish-American — very, very, very, fiercely proud. And yet I have spent my whole life listening to all the tropes about us and about our food and about our culture. I tolerated them for a long time, and I’m not really willing to tolerate them anymore.

But rather than fighting people, I think I would just as soon show others how they are misguided and how there is in fact a lot of really beautiful elements to what we are doing, My grandmother, the last conversation I had with her before she passed, I told her about this idea [of Nàdair] before we had ever chosen to do it. And she said that she was happy that she had lived long enough to not have to be embarrassed about being Scottish anymore.”

On purpose

The doctors have been really clear that the chances of me living a very long life are extremely low; too many things have been taken away. I’m just not going to be in this thing for a really long time. And I’m OK with that. But that is one of the reasons that I am doing what I am doing now, is that I will not be given the luxury of being a Paul Bocuse where I’m a chef until I’m in my 90s — it’s not going to happen. And that’s OK, but that also means that I intend to live it to the fullest,

I’ve started speeding up the life that I wanted to live. I’m gonna continue being a chef despite the fact that my doctors have told me to retire 25 times at this point. I’m not ready to retire yet. But I’m also not delusional enough to think that I get to just wait to do a lot of the things that I wanted to do in life, like I should just start doing those now.

On perfection

“When you live through real crisis, it has an incredibly powerful ability to really catalyze in your mind the difference between manifested crisis and real crisis. And to me, the study of being a chef and the pursuit of perfection is manifested crisis.”

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

This season, you’ll hear from icons and innovators like Daniel Boulud, Rodney Scott, Asma Khan, Emeril and E.J. Lagasse, Claudia Fleming, Dave Beran and Will Poulter, Dan Giusti, Priya Krishna, Lee Anne Wong, Cody Rigsby, Kevin Gillespie and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what’s on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that’ll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.