Top Chef Kelsey Barnard Clark: "I Don't Know If I Would've Won Without" This

Bravo's Top Chef Season 16's winner is Kelsey Barnard Clark — and (not too shabby) she picked up the prize for the season's Fan Favorite, too. But Kelsey recently revealed one downside that made her experience on the competition bittersweet: missing important parenting moments.

That said, it's also the very fact that she is a mom, Kelsey told The Feast, that was her secret weapon on the show. 

"I think that half the reason I want it [success as a chef is] because I’m a mom, so that was my driving force," she told The Feast. "On the one hand, I'm like, 'Don't ever do Top Chef with a newborn.' And then I’m like, 'Well, or yeah... but then at the same time it’s like, I don’t know if I would’ve won without that driving force because it kept me going."

She added that she told herself, "If you are out here, and you are taking the time away to do this, you better freaking win and make something of it." 

And clearly, her driving force propelled her to the Top Chef title. "One thing that I’ve had a ton of positive feedback from is just, to just show people that you can balance all of it carefully," she said. "You can have a husband and you can have a child, you can have a career, you can be a badass, and you can be motherly, you can be nurturing, and you can be tough."

Congrats to Kelsey — badass mom and Top Chef.

—Reporting by Laura Rosenfeld