The 'Top Chef: Houston' Cheftestants Lived in a Vibrant Apartment During Filming

Less than a year after Season 18 concluded, Top Chef is back with a brand new cast of cheftestants who are eager to make a mark on the culinary world.

For the first time, the show is exclusively covering the rich food scene in Houston, Texas (the ninth season took place in Texas, but it only highlighted the San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas areas).

When the contestants aren't shopping, planning out their menus, cooking, or serving, they are living together in Houston — which means that tensions can quickly rise.

In past seasons of the cooking competition, the stars have lived in large homes together, or in apartments if the location is a more densely-populated city.

For Season 19, the chefs are residing in an apartment-style space that features graphic art, vibrant colors, and a club room complete with a pool table. Read on to find out more about their show home.

During the supersized Season 19 premiere, the competitors got to check out their living quarters for the first time after a shopping trip to Whole Foods.

The brightly-colored living space was identified as the "Chef Apartments and Club Room" on the show. The living room features a large table, two sleek couches with orange backs, an expansive pink kitchen with white marble countertops, and a billiards table. The walls are filled with graphic art pieces as well.

While the bedrooms themselves resemble hotel rooms, the exact name and location for the Top Chef: Houston apartments has yet to be publicly shared.

The unique space wasn't the only spot to grab viewers' attention — the Season 19 kitchen is also impressing longtime fans of the show.

While the chefs may spend a fair amount of time in their shared living space, their other "homebase" is the Top Chef kitchen. The Houston set is the spot where the competitors complete many of their Quickfires, and it's often the place where they learn the details for the Elimination Challenges.

The massive Season 19 kitchen proves that everything really is bigger in Texas (though the large space is really due to the COVID safety precautions in place). There are a few key factors that make the kitchen space stand out from past seasons.

Like the apartments, the Season 19 kitchen features vibrant graphic art on the walls.

For Season 19, the stars were allowed to bring some of their own, homemade ingredients for the first time ever to the kitchen. They were also able to ask the producers to buy them certain products as well.

"The biggest thing that we've changed this year is we've allowed the chefs to bring homemade ingredients and give us a list of items they wanted us to purchase," supervising culinary producer Sandee Birdsong said in a video for Bravo Insider.

Will these homemade ingredients give any of the chefs a leg up in the competition?

You can check out the kitchen and the sleek apartment by tuning in to the show. New episodes of Top Chef: Houston air on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.