Top Chef is back in the kitchen! Every week, Parade’s Mike Bloom interviews the latest chef told to pack their knives and leave Kentucky.

The Chinese New Year is a celebration of positive tenets like longevity, health, happiness and togetherness. These are concepts that Boston chef Adrienne Wright has been grappling with throughout her time on Top Chef’s sixteenth season. After an eventful ride in Kentucky featuring stress, illness and conflict, she was able to take her cooking international as one of the final five chefs. But her catered canapé did not get the judges into the holiday spirit, making her kowtow to Macau in her elimination.

Adrienne’s journey around the track on Top Chef got off to a bad start. She attempted to hand-make tortellini for the first Elimination Challenge, but timing issues made her pull a pasta pivot, culminating in an ultimately underwhelming dish and an appearance in the bottom. Though she made a bad first impression, she redeemed herself immediately with a “home run” of fried catfish. But Adrienne’s real time to shine came in Restaurant Wars when her expediting pedigree made her confidently step up as Executive Chef. While the kitchens around her struggled to keep up service, she provided order among the chaos, leading her team to an easy win. Her stock was rising, but so was her temperature. During a party boat challenge out on Lake Cumberland, she came down with a nasty bug that sidelined her for the Elimination Challenge. Adrienne’s lowest low healthwise, though, ended up being her highest high in the competition. Still sick during a Quickfire for country star Hunter Hayes, she used ingredients that exerted the least amount of energy. As it turns out, he loved the simplicity in the dish, granting what would ultimately be her only win.

Though her illness disappeared soon after, drama remained a symptom of Adrienne’s time in Kentucky. She faced off against Sara Bradley in a battle of chicken and waffles at Rupp Arena, where she let slip that Sara was using a boxed mix. It led to a stadium full of mocking and a furious Sara, who lashed out at Adrienne and her team for revealing her shortcut. All seemed to be forgiven once the store-bought dust had settled, but perhaps the incident threw Adrienne off her game, as she then finished in the bottom for the next few challenges. Luckily, she was able to make it to the finals in Macau, now challenged to cater a Chinese New Year party. She entered the judging with confidence, feeling her deconstructed take on pork fried rice coupled with her sous chef Brian Young’s meat expertise would give her the momentum she needed in the final stretch. But the judges disagreed with her assessment, as they felt it was underwhelming and uninspired, ending Adrienne’s journey to the title.

Read on to hear Adrienne’s thoughts on her time in the game.

Based on their comments, do you ultimately agree with the judges’ decision to eliminate you over Eric and Sara?

I am still surprised that my flavor profile and focus on the challenge and culture didn’t resonate with the judges like it did with the guests of our Chinese New Year party. To have a dish that was definitely the guests’ favorite and go home for it was shocking. I was really happy with how this dish came out and was surprised to even be in the bottom three, honestly.

You disagreed with Graham that having your dish be one bite was not in the spirit of Chinese New Year. Can you elaborate on that?

I think food should be designed to be eaten in the setting it is served. My dish was one bite because we were serving our guests in a cocktail party setting, where they had a drink in one hand and no table to sit at to eat their food. That, for me, was what determined that I needed food easily eaten and experienced completely in one bite. If I were serving a Chinese New Year party at a communal table family style, I would have roasted and presented a whole suckling pig and served it with the same flavors and accoutrements. But that was not the setting for this challenge. I will always believe in serving food in a manner that is comfortable for your guest to eat in the space they are in.

The chefs this episode got heavily immersed in the Chinese culture, especially in the Quickfire. What was that experience like?

I loved our time in Chinese culture! Busy markets, language barriers and people connecting via food and smiles are all some of my favorite things about traveling. My past travels have heavily influenced the food I love to cook today, and I relish any chance to get to experience another culture and their flavors.

You ended up in the bottom the last couple of challenges in Kentucky. How did you emotionally reconcile that when you were starting a new phase in Macau?

I really loved my dish for the Muhammad Ali challenge, and I wouldn’t change a thing about that challenge. The mentorship episode, however, really threw me for a loop right from the start of the auction. I went into Macau ready for a clean slate and a fresh set of flavor profiles; Southern food/ingredients have never been a focus for me and were definitely a challenge for me on this Kentucky-based season.

On that note, how much did your experience growing up on a farm assist you in cooking in Kentucky?

I believe it always pays to know where your food is coming from, but honestly, the regional focus of a lot of our Kentucky challenges was hard for me. Southern cuisine has never been a focus for me professionally or a love for me personally, so it was a whole new flavor profile for me to try to identify with. I was joking at one point that none of my restaurants have dried herbs or garlic and onion powder even in their pantries. Those are staples to Southern cuisine, as well as ingredients like catfish or collard greens, which I have never cooked with professionally.

You struggled in the first Elimination Challenge, having to abandon your plans of handmade tortellini. How did that experience change your mindset about approaching the competition?

The first Elimination Challenge was a wake-up call for me about the realities of Top Chef. It put into perspective that the challenge was not to just build the most impressive dish for each challenge, but also the dish that you can make under any circumstances. I took that to heart from there on out, trying to push my limits but always being aware of what constraints the challenge itself placed upon my dish.

Your Restaurant Wars team had the best service out of the three this season. Can you talk about what your experience was like as Executive Chef?

My role as Executive Chef for Restaurant Wars was where I was most comfortable this whole season. I loved being the head of the kitchen and controller of the chaos for that challenge. I was very proud of our team for building a menu that we could execute and then sticking together and working as a team to make that service happen.

You underwent a severe bout of illness that hampered you both on the boat and in Nashville. Can you elaborate on what exactly happened?

I came down with an unknown case of GI distress, essentially what we would call “Traveler’s Diarrhea” if I were out of the country. It took a round of antibiotics and two bags of fluid at the ER to keep me on my feet and get me back on track.

How did you react to winning your first challenge in Nashville, despite being so sick?

Winning the quickfire in Nashville was amazing. Except that my reward for winning was an extra hour of cook time when I could barely stand on my feet! I loved the win, but I would have happily given up my extra time.

You were a part of the biggest drama of the season with Sara’s use of boxed waffle mix during the basketball challenge. What’s your reaction to the way everything blew up?

People were really upset by Sara getting heckled that challenge, but my intention wasn’t to have Sara heckled by hundreds of KU fans. It was for her to have to defend her choice to use a mix on a professional cooking show. I didn’t bring it up in front of the crowd for a mob trial; I brought it up to the judges. Everything in your shopping cart each challenge was a choice you made about the dish you were presenting and I thought that choice needed to be questioned.

What was the experience like to cook for your mentor Chris Coombs on your last night in Kentucky?

The food that Chris Coombs and I create together really takes a lot of time and love to put together. I was thrown for a loop in trying to represent our long history together in such a short amount of time for prep and cook. The additional challenge of picking ingredients from the auction house just clouded my head as to a clear vision for the dish and that lack of vision for the final product showed in my plating, which is my biggest regret for that cook. I wish I could redo that challenge and better represent the brand that he and I have built together in the past seven years, but I will have to hope that top five in season sixteen of Top Chef speaks loudly enough to who we are as a team.

You stated this episode that you wanted to win Top Chef to move back to Connecticut and raise a family while still cooking. Though you didn’t win, what is the progress on that goal, especially considering you and your husband are now expecting?

My husband and I are so excited to be having our first child in May! Moving back to Connecticut to give back to that community is something that I am very passionate about and is definitely in our five-year plan.