‘Top Chef’ Fan Favorite Fatima Ali Dies at 29
“Fan Favorite” Pakistani-American chef Fatima Ali, known for her 2017 appearance on popular US Bravo television series Top Chef, passed away late January after losing a battle with cancer.
Ali appeared on season 15 of the reality competition show as a contestant and was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, Ewing’s Sarcoma, right after.
She was known for her “fun personality and excellent cooking” of food from her native Pakistan, Bravo told reporters.
While believed that the chemotherapy had rid her of cancer, her cancer returned in September last year with doctors telling her it has metastasized.
The 29-year-old chef, had in October 2018, penned an op-ed for Bon Appetit, in which she shared that she has a year to live and intends to use it to make amends with the people in her life and to sample the finest food all over the world.
To taste all the finest foods she planned to travel the world. Her friends from Top Chef started a GoFundMe page to help her fulfill her wishes.
“It’s funny, isn’t it? When we think we have all the time in the world to live, we forget to indulge in the experiences of living,” Ali wrote on the website Healthyish.
“When that choice is yanked away from us, that’s when we scramble to feel. I am desperate to overload my senses in the coming months, making reservations at the world’s best restaurants, reaching out to past lovers and friends, and smothering my family, giving them the time that I so selfishly guarded before.”
Ali posted pictures of herself during cancer treatment on her Instagram page, sharing her struggle with fatigue even as she flashed a warm smile.
At the mere age of 18, Ali left her hometown to pursue her dream of becoming a chef, the network said in a statement Friday after her death.
She enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America and started working in New York restaurants, eventually becoming executive sous chef at Macy’s Stella 34 and La Fonda Del Sol.
When she first appeared on “Top Chef,” Ali told Bravo, she was hesitant to cook Pakistani food, even though she was passionate about it.
“I wasn’t sure if the judges were even going to be excited about eating that kind of food, but they were, and that really reinforced a lot of faith in the food that I want to cook,” she said.
Ali made a heavy impact on culinary media, she was a contestant on the Food Network show “Chopped” in 2012 and won. She hoped to one day open her own restaurant in New York City.
“I dream of my future restaurant, where the kebabs melt against your tongue and the cocktails are just sweet enough to calm the burn,” she wrote on Healthyish in May 2018.
“I have never felt more fulfilled than when I let myself crawl into bed late night after a back-breaking day of cooking.”
“I’m sick and unfortunately I’m getting sicker,” she wrote in her last Instagram post on Jan 11.
“Right now all I need are prayers; prayers that are simple. I hope because a wish is putting on too much responsibility on the other, that you will somehow find forgiveness in your big heart for whenever I must have hurt you. I thank you a million times over for when you have given me joy. I’ll try to keep everyone updated the best that I possibly can.”
2019
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