The finale in sight, Milwaukee chef Dan Jacobs looks back on his 'Top Chef' journey

Where does Dan Jacobs get the energy?

The Milwaukee chef took a phone call with the Journal Sentinel just before prepping one of his restaurants, DanDan, 360 E. Erie St., for a private event — mere hours after a whirlwind trip to Chicago to attend the prestigious James Beard Award ceremony, where he and business partner, chef Dan Van Rite, had been nominated in the category of Best Chef, Midwest.

They didn’t bring home the medal this year, but Jacobs wasn’t let down.

“At least we’ll be able to use the tuxedos another time,” he said.

It was the pair’s sixth nomination for the award, but their first time making the short list. Pretty impressive during the stretch when their fine-dining restaurant, EsterEv, 2165 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., was transitioning from a space inside sister restaurant DanDan to its new, standalone digs in Bay View.

It's even more impressive considering the opening coincided with the beginning of Jacobs’ spectacular run as a contestant on Season 21 of “Top Chef,” the popular Bravo cooking competition show that was set in Wisconsin this season.

And on June 19, he might just take home the title.

After 13 weeks in competition, Jacobs is one of three contestants moving on to the finale, along with Danny Garcia of New York City and Savannah Miller of Durham, North Carolina.

If he wins, Jacobs will take home $250,000, be featured in Food & Wine magazine and make a special appearance at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. And that doesn’t include the inevitable boost both his restaurants will receive from superfans who want a taste of the food from a “Top Chef” champion.

But for now, he’s stoked to have made it to the competition’s end.

“I’m so proud of how I’ve been able to represent Milwaukee and Wisconsin on the show,” Jacobs said. “It’s such a cool thing. I’m going to cook in the finale! I’m one of 60 people that have ever been able to do that over 20-plus years.

“It really justifies the voice in my head that always said that I could do this and was good enough to be in my position."

Jacobs was cast this season after applying to compete nearly a dozen times, the first time a professionally working chef from Wisconsin has been cast on the show. In an interview with the Journal Sentinel after the season premiered, he said there was something about this season’s tryout that just felt right.

“I never gave up on it,” he said. “And it’s something that has made it all the sweeter, that it’s taken a little bit longer. I don’t know if I would have done as well as a younger version of myself. But I’ve always known I could do this.”

Finale prep meant studying, staying away from the kitchen

After Jacobs earned his spot in the top four on Episode 12, he and the other contestants took a weekslong hiatus before reuniting for the finale in Cura?ao. Garcia, Miller and top-four finalist Laura Ozyilmaz split off to their homes on the coasts while Jacobs remained in Milwaukee, his home just five minutes from the downtown hotel the contestants had been sequestered in for about six weeks.

In a sense, it was a relief for Jacobs, who could finally spend time with his wife, Kate Riley, and pop into his restaurants that had been operating without him for a month and a half.

“It was weird. I wanted to be there, but I didn’t want to jump back in since I knew I would be leaving again,” he said. “That lasted one service ... or maybe an hour into one service. Then I was back in plating at EsterEv and talking to tables. It was really hard for me to not be present during it.”

When he could pull himself away from his restaurants, he spent time studying Caribbean cuisine, something he knew would be at the forefront of his finale challenges.

He ate at Caribbean restaurants in Milwaukee and Chicago, and texted back and forth with “Top Chef: Wisconsin” contestant Charly Pierre, who is Haitian, for advice.

“It was a deep dive,” he said. “And now I have a love for habaneros and scotch bonnets that I never had before. They’re by far my favorite peppers now.”

But he also allowed some time to recharge, a much-needed reset after weeks of relentless competition.

“I think I was running a little low on gas,” he said of the end of his regular-season run. “I felt like if we would have kept going, I don’t think we’d be having the discussion we’re having right now.”

Experience and time were key factors in his 'Top Chef' run

At 46, Jacobs is the oldest contestant on Season 21, always quick to crack a joke about his position as “the old man” in the group of younger chefs around him. But he was always able to keep up, especially admirable considering he competed all these weeks while battling Kennedy’s Disease, a neuromuscular condition that affects his ability to walk, use his hands and swallow. All things he’d need to rely on while competing on “Top Chef.”

He revealed his condition to his fellow contestants on Episode 2, and he relied on leg braces and a cane to maneuver around the Top Chef Kitchen and challenge destinations as he competed.

Some would’ve leaned on his condition as a handicap, but Jacobs’ years of restaurant experience and a disease that forces him to slow down may be contributing factors to his success on the show.

“Top Chef” judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons said as much when they spoke to the Journal Sentinel in an interview in Milwaukee last summer after Dan had made the top five.

“Dan doesn’t move as quickly as the other chefs in the kitchen, and we all know why and are respectful of that,” Simmons said. “But there hasn’t been an instance, ever, when he hasn’t accomplished just as much if not more than anyone else. And it makes you think, the other chefs are just clamoring and rushing so fast, maybe there’s something to be said for taking a minute, thinking a little more slowly, and moving more slowly, with purpose and intention. Because he’s still here. He’s top five, and he’s at the top of his game.”

“Obviously he’s struggling with his illness, but he’s been a trooper, and he wanted to come on the show because of that, to show everyone that it’s not stopping him, and he’s definitely done that,” Colicchio said. “He’s already won the season without winning the season.”

Jacobs’ biggest struggles and successes on “Top Chef”

Jacobs owes much of his success on the show to methodical thinking. When approaching each challenge, he kept a checklist of things he knew he needed to do to pull it off successfully.

“The two times I deviated from the checklist were the two times I found myself in the bottom,” he said, referring to the Brewers’ Famous Racing Sausages challenge and the tablescape challenge. “I learned that, as long as I followed my gut and followed what I’d prepared myself for, I was always good.”

The main focus of the checklist was to correctly interpret each challenge and stick to the theme. Those two times he fell in the bottom, he said he was trying to force his cooking into a concept where it didn’t fit.

Also on his checklist were creativity and correct plating (“You’re not going to pick a bowl where someone needs to cut meat,” he said. “You have to think about how somebody’s going to eat a dish.”), but the most important item was to have fun.

“Both of the challenges where I found myself on the bottom, I was tense or uncomfortable with something happening, and just not having fun,” he said. “I really had to make sure that I would go into the challenge in the correct headspace.”

The chaos cuisine challenge was one of his favorites of the season, a head-scratcher of a prompt that let the chefs basically do whatever they wanted in the kitchen as long as it was creative.

“I thought the chaos challenge got a bad rap, but I got to just make something that I knew was gonna be really fun, almost stoner-y, but still really, really good,” he said. (Jacobs made a playful, savory take on Japanese okonomiyaki funnel cake.)

The Indigenous food challenge was another favorite — for the opposite reason. The chefs were limited to using only Indigenous ingredients that many had never worked with, and Jacobs said that restriction forced him to push himself in a new direction.

“It was one of those moments where you’re so constricted and there are so many parameters that you become creative because of it,” he said. “I also have a lot of admiration and respect for those judges,” referring to guest judges chef Sean Sherman of Owamni and NATIFS, Elena Terry of Wild Bearies and Bryce Stevenson of Miijim.

Jacobs placed high on both of his favorite challenges, but he won two outright this season: the supper club challenge and Restaurant Wars.

Both were collaborative challenges where teams worked together to create a complete menu.

“I’m not shocked by that, because I look at restaurants and cooking professionally as a team sport,” he said. “You’re only as good as the people that you have on your team.”

New cooking skills and special bonds were formed in the Top Chef Kitchen

Although he was competing against them, Jacobs thought of his fellow contestants as a team the entire time, and remains close with them.

“We have a really active group chat,” he said. “We all genuinely like each other.”

He said there’s a special bond with the contestants who stuck around longer in the competition.

And, yes, he’s still tight with his on-screen bestie, contestant Amanda Turner. He said of the other half of the duo dubbed “Damanda” on the show, “I found somebody I’m going to be friends with for the rest of my life.”

He’s not just taking those friendships with him. Jacobs has walked away with a new appreciation for cooking after watching and learning from his fellow contestants.

“You’re surrounded by all these creatives and we all kind of fed off each other,” he said. “That’s what cooking is about, learning from other people around you.”

He pointed to fellow finalist Garcia as a source of inspiration — the notoriously technical chef creates dishes that look like artwork. He picked up pastry skills from Kévin D'Andrea, too. And he called watching Michelle Wallace make fried chicken “such a pleasure.”

He even learned a few tricks for home cooking from Manny Barella.

“I would ask Manny to tell me about all this super junk food — the kind of stuff we would make and eat on our own ... that was always really fun,” he said.

“There’s always going to be somebody who knows something you don’t know anything about, and you just try to pick up from them by watching.”

Jacobs is welcoming many of his fellow “Top Chef” contestants to DanDan and EsterEv in a series of guest chef dinners and brunches held through November this year. Turner, Kaleena Bliss and Soo Ahn have already participated. Garcia, Miller, Barella and Wallace will come back to cook in the months to come. It’s a chance for Jacobs to see his old friends and give the people of Milwaukee a taste of the cooking that inspired him throughout the competition.

And it’s another chance for the chefs to spend time in Milwaukee, too.

Milwaukee didn’t need 'Top Chef' to be cool ... but it’s nice to be recognized

Jacobs acted as a city ambassador to the cast and crew as they filmed here late last summer, pointing out historical sites and favorite spots around town.

“Every time we bring a chef up here from anywhere around the country, they’re always like, ‘Holy (expletive), Milwaukee is cool!’” he said. “It’s something I said even early on: We’re so cool that we don’t even know we’re cool.”

It was clear to everyone — even the judges — how special this place is to him, and how special he is to the city.

“He’s obviously beloved,” Simmons said. “Every guest judge who’s walked into our kitchen has been so excited to see him. This show is going to make him famous around the country, but, apparently, he was already the most popular chef in Milwaukee to begin with.”

“This is a really cool place to live, work and call home,” Jacobs said. “And I’ve had the pleasure of doing that for 13 years now. I’m so excited for whatever’s to come in the future. I’m all in. This place is home.”

Home is where Jacobs plans to watch the “Top Chef: Wisconsin” finale. He might invite a couple friends over, but, right now, he said, his social battery is running low.

Maybe he’ll have time to tuck away his new tuxedo, add a new dish to EsterEv’s tasting menu or gear up for DanDan’s new vendor post at Summerfest this year.

He’s already thinking about what his next big TV endeavor would be, as he fell in love with television filming during his time on the show.

But after this year, and an incredible run to the “Top Chef: Wisconsin” finale, no one could blame him if he took a little rest.

How to watch 'Top Chef: Wisconsin' finale: TV channel, streaming

The finale of "Top Chef: Wisconsin" will air live on Bravo on June 19 at 8 p.m., and will be available to stream the next day on Peacock, BravoTV.com or the Bravo app.

Rachel Bernhard joined the Journal Sentinel as dining critic in June 2023. She’s been busy exploring the Milwaukee area food scene to share her favorite finds with readers along the way. Like all Journal Sentinel reporters, she buys all meals, accepts no gifts and is independent of all establishments she covers.

What should she cover next? Contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @rachelbernhard or on Instagram at @rach.eats.mke.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Chef Dan Jacobs looks back on his 'Top Chef' journey before the finale