Of course, I have to start by wishing you congratulations for an outstanding season and setting a Top Chef record! How are you feeling right now that you got to relive the victory by watching it back?

It's a huge sigh of relief. It's a very hard secret to keep. The first thing that you want to do is scream and tell everyone what happened. This was filmed in October. The news is out. We've got my family here, and we had a great time. And it's just been an amazing couple of days.

I can only imagine. Now let's go back to October to that final meal. How good of a chance you think you had after winning, especially after the judges' comments to you, Gabri, and Sara?

I all looked very tight. I think everyone had a really, really good chance of winning. It's hard to say. Sara did have a liver problem. And it kind of makes one course redundant. If you score three 10's, and someone else scores four 8's, that's still 32 over 30. So, it's a very hard way to judge. I didn't get to taste any of their dishes. But it was a very tight finale, for sure.

You are someone who always puts so much thought and preparation into your dishes. Was your concept of highlighting all the different nationalities from your background something you always had in your head, or did it develop as the season went along?.

I said in season 19, my golden rule is, if I made the finale, I'm not going to just do dishes because I like them. Or saying, "I would have liked these amazing dishes that would have been in the finale, but it just didn't tie into anything that made sense." Why would I have put it on there? Even though it could have been a great menu, it didn't say anything about the significance of who I am or why I put these dishes up in front of these esteemed judges or chefs.