Grant Gillon: Where Are They Now?

Spoiler note: this post confirms that Grant Gillon won his season of MasterChef.

Grant Gillon won the thirteenth season of MasterChef US in 2023, taking the title in the finale that aired on 20 September. A 32-year-old from Altoona, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines, he came to the show as a home cook with a day job in beer sales, and won by blending Midwestern comfort with Italian technique in front of judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Aarón Sánchez. Here is where the years since took him.

A Midwestern win

Grant's food leaned into where he was from and where his heart was: hearty Midwestern cooking crossed with the Italian dishes he loved, and his winning menu included a raviolo and a stout cake. As a University of Iowa alum cooking for a national title, he became a local story as much as a national one, and much of his post-show work has stayed rooted in Iowa rather than chasing a move to a coastal restaurant scene.

Pop-ups, partnerships, and family

Since winning, Grant has cooked a run of pop-up and special guest dinners around central Iowa, including events at a golf course in Altoona and a partnership with a local catering operation to bring restaurant-level meals to his neighbors. Reporting on his post-show life describes ticketed pop-up events that sell out quickly, spanning holiday dinners and Italian and pasta tastings. He has also leaned into short-form video, filming approachable recipe clips, often with his young son alongside him.

His cooking is the kind that rewards patience and good basics, from fresh pasta to a proper cake, so a solid stand mixer and a dependable rolling pin both earn their place on his kind of counter.

Where things stand now

The clearly documented picture is the sold-out pop-up dinners, the local catering partnership, and the recipe videos, all centred on Iowa. Reporting has also described a longer-term goal of opening a farm-to-table restaurant in his hometown of Altoona. Whether that restaurant has opened is where the reliably verifiable trail runs out, so this post treats it as a stated ambition rather than a done deal. What is solid is the pop-up circuit and the family-and-Iowa focus of his career since the win.

The takeaway for fans

Grant's story is a grounded, likeable version of the MasterChef aftermath: no coastal-restaurant reinvention, just a home cook turning the title into sold-out dinners in his own community. If his Midwestern-Italian cooking has you wanting to make fresh pasta or a layer cake, good fundamentals matter more than any single gadget, and a reliable mixing bowl set is where most of it starts.

For other champions, Gerron Hurt and Jesse Rosenwald took their own paths after winning, and every MasterChef US winner has the full list.