Local Boy Makes Good ... Dishes: Kyle Timpson Wins Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’
Chef Kyle Timpson (second from left) pictured among ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Season 23 top four chefs.
From clamming in the back bay to searing red snapper for Gordon Ramsay on television, Cape May County’s Kyle Timpson was destined and determined to win Season 23 of “Hell’s Kitchen: Head Chefs Only.”
For the latest season, Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” turned up the heat by inviting only head chefs to compete on the program. Ultimately, Timpson rose to the top, beating 17 cream-of-the-crop chefs over 16 episodes to win the reality-TV cooking competition.
Along with the prestige of winning the show, Timpson earned a cash prize of $250,000, along with an offer to become the head chef at Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen restaurant at Foxwood’s Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn.
Growing up in Dennis Township, Timpson found consistent interest in food from the very beginning.
“I always wanted to cook,” he shares. “I wake up, and I’m like – food!”
He carried that passion right onto the TV screen on “Hell’s Kitchen,” where Timpson also made history as the first openly gay man to win the competition. From day one, he announced his mantra to the world, saying: “I am going to make my food big, bold, flavorful, and sexy, just like me.”
Beyond enthusiasm and even talent, Timpson believes he also had a little luck on his side during the show. Off-camera, shortly after the opening ceremony of the show, while walking toward the buses that would take contestants to Foxwoods Resort Casino for the first challenge, he saw a lone dandelion growing from a patch of grass.
“I made a wish, and I wished that I’d win … It’s so weird, I don’t know if I believe in that stuff,” he says. “It was weird that I did it, and then it happened.”
With a personality that is larger than life, Timpson finds both humor and truth in his plus-size figure, as he jovially equates it to his passion for cooking.
“I always baked when I was younger,” he shares. “I’m a fat kid. I say that a lot. People tend not to write it. They’re like, ‘That’s weird.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m a fat kid. I like to eat.’ If I was maybe thinner, then I don’t know what I would do – maybe not this. When I was in school, I would make cupcakes. If you ask anyone who I grew up with, they’d say, ‘Oh, yeah, the kid who made cupcakes.’”
Of course, being raised down the shore, Timpson’s free time wasn’t only spent baking.
“Growing up, I was always fishing. I like fishing in the ocean, but there’s so much more that you can do in the back bay,” Timpson says. “I’m a back-bay person. We used to go on the boat, and I’d be like, ‘Drop me off at this mudflat, I’m going to clam.’ I was always crabbing, getting oysters, clams, mussels, razor clams, everything.”
Today, Timpson’s connection to fishing remains strong, especially through his brother Austin, who now fishes professionally in Wildwood.
With his enthusiasm for food, cooking, and fishing, working at restaurants throughout Cape May County was a natural first step in Timpson’s career. His first job was at Island Grill in Cape May when he was 16. He would go on to study at Atlantic Cape Community College’s culinary program, where he earned multiple accolades for his food and presentation skills. Timpson also worked in kitchens throughout the area, including stints at The Reeds and Chill in Stone Harbor, Tony Beef in Galloway, and Beach Plum Farm and Cold Spring Grange in Cape May.
After honing his skills at the shore, he eventually made the jump to the City of Brotherly Love, relocating to Philadelphia in 2021 to begin his role as a line cook at Moshulu. Within 3 months, Timpson earned a promotion to sous chef, and one year later he became the chef de cuisine. After spending nearly three years at Moshulu, Kyle accepted an offer to be the executive sous chef at Jean-Georges Philadelphia, located at the Four Seasons Hotel at the Comcast Center.
“When I got there on my first day, I took a picture out the window, and I quoted Miley Cyrus in the ‘Hannah Montana’ movie,” he shares. “I said, ‘Life’s a climb, but the view is great.’”
Little did Timpson know that shortly after landing this prestigious new role, his view would soon look a whole lot better. Approached by “Hell’s Kitchen” showrunners to compete in the show, he decided to put his career at Jean-Georges on pause and test his skills in Chef Gordon Ramsay’s blazing reality TV show.
One highlight of his experience was a challenge involving a seafood tower, providing a golden opportunity to spotlight his affinity for coastal fare.
“Seafood tower? Period. I got this,” Timpson proclaims. “No one can make a more extravagant seafood tower than me. I’m gay, of course … extra and gay, big, bold, and sexy.”
In the end, Kyle won over Ramsay in the Season 23 finale along with his assembled crew of previously eliminated chefs from the season – including Brandon, Joe, Whit, and Lulu. He and his team devised a masterful dinner service menu featuring appetizers such as summer salad, tuna crudo, Spanish octopus, churros, and pork belly. The main course options included roasted chicken, red snapper, lobster pappardelle, ribeye, and one of Kyle’s favorites – scallops.
“There’s so much you can do with scallops,” he says. “They’re so versatile. Growing up down in the Cape May area, you could always just get scallops right off the boat, with my brother working on fishing boats. I could call him right now and ask him to get me scallops, and he would just get them, in the shell, right off the boat.”
After his amazing final round, it was Timpson’s door that opened to reveal that he was the winner of “Hell’s Kitchen’s” grueling 16-episode competition, as his mother Susan and Aunt Julie watched among the hundreds of audience members there to cheer him on. With confetti flying and sparklers dazzling, Timpson was in awe.
“It was crazy. It was surreal,” he reminisces. “I don’t remember what [Ramsay] said until I watched the show because I blacked out. The door opened, and there’s like 500 people in this room, jam-packed like a sardine can. The only thing I wish I did was dance around in the confetti and have my Diana Ross moment.”
After the reveal, the show’s sous chefs drenched Timpson in champagne. When asked how he felt, Timpson responded to Ramsay by saying: “Chef, this isn’t what I meant when I said I needed a drink.”
Timpson says he still has the winning chef coat to this day: “I never washed it!”
While Foxwoods Resort Casino has yet to officially announce Timpson as the head chef at its Hell’s Kitchen restaurant, he does plan on accepting the offer. After that, he’ll figure out what’s next.
“I would love to open a seafood restaurant, whether it’s in Jersey or in Philadelphia,” he says. “I haven’t decided yet, but that would be after ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ and after I go and work up there.”
But wherever Timpson’s career takes him, you can bet that he’ll be chopping it up in a world-renowned restaurant.
“I’m addicted to cooking, and serving people, and hospitality,” he shares. “Cooking, it’s not just my passion, it’s literally everything to me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”