Hawaiʻi Island’s very own Chef Rhoda Magbitang has been crowned the season 23 winner of “Top Chef,” the popular Bravo reality cooking competition show.
Magbitang grew up in the Philippines and moved to the U.S. when she was 17, and she now resides on Hawaiʻi Island where she serves as the first female executive chef at CanoeHouse at Mauna Lani.
Magbitang returned home after taking the “Top Chef” crown and spoke with HPR about her big win and her experience working on the show.
Interview Highlights
On moving to Hawaiʻi Island
MAGBITANG: It's surprisingly seamless, really. I mean, especially Big Island, you know. It could not be any more different, but I've always just sought a quieter environment and a quieter life. … I love that there's one road in and out of anywhere you go, and there's no traffic. There's less food options, which is fine. It's like, I think I can manage to make something that I'm craving every once in a while, but yeah, I just … I love it here so much.
On her insider experience on “Top Chef”
MAGBITANG: I'm not sure how much I can divulge. But they take away all of your devices. We don't have access to recipes, even if we brought a notebook with us with all of our recipes prior to coming there, they take those away as well. They give you a blank notebook to kind of regurgitate everything that you've memorized up to that point, so it evens the playing field for everyone, which is fair, and you get to speak to your loved ones once a week. … It's long days and it's early, early mornings. You get mic'd up, they take care of you, though, like you know, they bring you coffee, they bring you breakfast, make sure you eat. … Looking back, it was really fun, except for when it's not. ...
When you start cooking, it's just you and your tools and the food. Everything else leading up to that, and everything else after that, those are all just noise. And you're waiting, and it's anticipating, but once the timer starts until it goes off, you're just cooking. And it's the funnest part of it. It's probably like the easiest part. And obviously you have to mold your dishes to the challenges, and they have to fit the challenges, and they also have to taste good. … So you just have to be able to like not overthink things, which is so, so much easier said than done.
On returning to work after her big victory
MAGBITANG: It was overwhelming, but like, in the best way. And the restaurant is as busy as ever. We want to be very careful how we handle reservations moving forward, because you know, obviously, we don't want service to suffer. We don't want food to suffer, and we don't want to just care about the numbers. We want to be able to be really thoughtful and just careful, like moving forward. We don't want to burn out our team members, and I know this is a busy time, and it's a really important time, because this is going to shape who we are moving forward, and we don't want people to feel like they're just a number. And we still want to be able to do what we do and do what we do best.
This story aired on The Conversation on July 2, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
