'Top Chef' favorite Fatima Ali succumbs to cancer

FATIMA ALI, 1990-2019

Fatima Ali, the Pakistan-born chef died after her nearly year-long battle against cancer.
A contestant in the Top Chef show's Season 15 that aired earlier this year, she finished iseventh out of 15 chefs but her personality won over the audiences and was voted Fan Favorite on the Bravo network show hosted by Indian American personality Padma Lakishmi.

The network released this statement Saturday (Jan. 26): "Bravo's Top Chef family, we are deeply saddened to share the news that Fatima Ali has lost her courageous battle with cancer. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time. People not only fell in love with her cooking, but fell in love with her personality and heart. We hope that the beautiful memories shared with her will provide comfort to everyone who knew and loved her."

The 29-year old Ali left her Pakistani hometown at age of 18 and moved to New York to pursue her dream of becoming a professional chef.

She enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America and scored her first job as a junior sous chef at Café Centro in New York. She eventually became the youngest executive sous chef at Macy's Stella 34, and later became executive sous chef at La Fonda Del Sol.

Ali was first diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, back in late 2017, as that season of Top CheF was just starting to air. The chef had declared herself cancer-free this past summer but revealed that it was back in the fall.

By the summer of 2018, she said she was cancer-free. But in October she wrote an essay for Bon Appetitt that her cancer had returned "with a vengence" and had been given less than a year to live.

Two weeks ago, she posted on social media that her health was declining.

“Right now all I need are prayers; prayers that are simple,” she continued. “I hope, because a wish is putting on too much responsibility on the other, that you will somehow find forgiveness in your big heart for whenever I must have hurt you. I thank you a million times over for when you have given me joy.”

Last week, many of Ali’s Top Chef friends gathered in Los Angeles to show support during what were some of her final days.

INSTAGRAM / CHRIS SCOTT

Friday, Lakshmi, cancelled a Facebook Live event "for personal reasons." The Top Chef host posted:

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Popular 'Top Chef' contestant writes she has a year to live.

SCREEN CAPTURE

Fatima Ali on 'Top Chef'

POPULAR Top Chef contestant Fatima Ali said Tuesday (Oct. 9) is trying to live a lifetime in the year left to her.

The 29-year old Pakistani American chef's cancer cells “are back with a vengeance.”

Ali, voted fan favorite on Season 15 of the Bravo cooking reality show that finished airing in March, wrote her dire diagnosis for Bon Appetit.

“My oncologist has told me that I have a year to live, with or without the new chemotherapy regimen,” she wrote. “I was looking forward to being 30, flirty and thriving. Guess I have to step it up on the flirting. I have no time to lose.”

INSTAGRAM / PADMA LAKSHIMI

'Top Chef' host Padma Lakshimi, left, visits Fatima Ali.

“I am desperate to overload my senses in the coming months, making reservations at the world’s best restaurants, reaching out to past lovers and friends, and smothering my family, giving them the time that I so selfishly guarded before,” she added.

According to her Top Chef bio, Ali immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan at age 18, attended the Culinary Institute of America and made a name for herself in the competitive New York City restaurant scene.

Ali was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in late 2017. After undergoing chemotherapy and surgery she was declared cancer-free. However, she wrote, "The cancer cells my doctors believed had vanished are back with a vengeance in my left hip and femur bone."

A day after Ali announced her diagnosis, her friends and fellow chefs launched a GoFundMe campaign to support her dream of eating her way around the world.

One of the members of Team Fati, as they’re calling themselves, is chef Adrienne Cheatham, who competed against Ali in the same season of Top Chef. In an Instagram post, Cheatham wrote that the group created the campaign in an effort to help Ali experience her “dream to live to the fullest” in the time she has left.

"I was always deathly afraid of being average in any way, and now I desperately wish to have a simple, uneventful life," Ali concluded in her poignant essay.
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