Jennifer Behm: Where Are They Now?

Spoiler note: this post confirms that Jennifer Behm won her season of MasterChef.

Jennifer Behm won the second season of MasterChef US in 2011, taking the title in the finale that aired on 16 August. A former Miss Delaware from Wilmington, she won a season decided by a three-course dinner that impressed judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliot, and she left with the trophy and the show's cash prize. Here is where the years since took her.

Building a food career after the trophy

Rather than leaning on television, Jennifer put her win to work in the restaurant world. She launched a catering company and, in 2015, opened her own restaurant in Rhode Island called Red Fin Crudo, a raw-bar and kitchen concept she ran with her husband, Julio Lazzarini. It was a real bricks-and-mortar bet rather than a media-only career, and it kept her cooking for the public for several years.

Where things stand now

According to reporting on the business, Red Fin Crudo closed in the summer of 2020, with the owners saying they would move toward private chef services. Since then Jennifer's public profile has centred on that private and event cooking work alongside her husband, plus the occasional judging and demonstration appearance, rather than a single high-profile restaurant or television slot.

That is roughly where the reliably verifiable trail settles. She has stayed active in food, but without a long-running show or a headline new restaurant, the specifics of her current projects are harder to pin down with confidence, and it would be guesswork to describe a current venture beyond the private chef and event work on the record. What is solid is the arc: catering, then Red Fin Crudo from 2015 to 2020, then a pivot to private cooking.

The takeaway for fans

Jennifer's story is a clear-eyed version of the MasterChef aftermath. The win opened a restaurant and a catering business, the restaurant ran its course, and she adapted into private work rather than chasing the spotlight. It is a more common outcome than the breakout-star fantasy, and no less real. If her plated, restaurant-style food has you wanting to raise your own game, a good food scale is the unglamorous tool that separates precise cooking from guesswork.

For how other champions fared, Gerron Hurt and Kelsey Murphy each built very different post-show careers, and every MasterChef US winner has the full list.