Meet the Cast of 'Top Chef' Season 5 Ariane Duarte is one of the contestants of the fifth season of the Bravo reality show Top Chef. The 41-year-old chef was born and raised in Verona, New Jersey. Inspired to cook by her grandmothers, she later trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. She then went on to work in many of the country’s most prestigious restaurants, before she set off on her own and established her own restsurant, CulinAriane, in Montclair, New Jersey.