Top Chef (), also known as Top Chef Middle East or Top Chef MENA, is a reality competition television series and an Arabic adaptation of the American television series of the same name. Contestants from across the Arab world compete against one another in culinary challenges and are judged by a panel of professional chefs and other personalities from the food industry, with one or more competitors eliminated in each episode.
The first edition of the show, created by LBC, aired in 2011 and 2012. After a hiatus, the series was relaunched by MBC in 2016. The fifth season of the MBC version was nominated for the 2022 International Emmy Award for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment.
Show format Each episode typically consists of three segments: the Quickfire Challenge, the Elimination Challenge, and the Judges' Table.
In the Quickfire Challenge, each contestant is required to cook a dish with specific requirements or participate in a culinary-related challenge within one hour or less. A guest judge selects one or more chefs as the best in the challenge. In the Elimination Challenge, the contestants have to prepare one or more dishes to meet the challenge requirements, which are often more complex and time-consuming than the Quickfire. Some Elimination Challenges are individual, while others may require the contestants to work in teams. The chefs then report to the Judges' Table, where the judges deliberate on the best and worst dishes. The chef with the worst dish is eliminated from the competition.
Seasons Season Winner Runner-up Original air dates Host Judge(s) LBC version 1 Omar El Ghoul 26 April – 19 June 2011 Siham Tueni Joe Barza 2 Selma AbuAlia 23 March – 17 July 2012 Jumana Murad MBC version 1 Issam Jaafari Hala Ayash 21 September – 14 December 2016 Mona Mosly Bobby ChinnMaroun Chedid 2 Mostafa Seif Asil Sharif 18 October – 27 December 2017 3 Ali Ghzawi Mounir Rochdi 5 December 2018 – 27 February 2019 4 Sama Jaad Mohamed si Abdelkader 11 December 2019 – 11 March 2020 5 Charbel Hayek Naseem Rasrummani 13 October 2021 – 19 January 2022 6 Aïmen Samhoud Abdullah Bekri 14 September – 7 December 2022 7 Tareq Taha Mohamed si Abdelkader 27 December 2023 – 6 March 2024 8 Shehab Medhat Alaeddine Zitoun 10 December 2024 – 25 February 2025 9 Ruba Khoury Ahmed Allwani 19 November 2025 – 10 February 2026
References
External links Official website