Top Chef winner arrested and charged with DUI after car crash with children on board

Top Chef champion Kelsey Barnard Clark was arrested and charged with driving under the influence after she crashed her car with two children reportedly inside.

The celebrity chef, 35, was taken into custody Wednesday night after the Dothan County Police Department in Alabama responded to a report of a crash in a residential neighborhood, according to local news outlets.

“We received a call regarding a vehicle striking the mailbox in the 1300 block of Selkirk Drive,” Dothan police Public Information Officer Lt. Scott Owens told WRBC 6 News. “Our officers who responded to the scene determined that Ms. Clark was under the influence.”

Nobody was injured in the crash, and the children were reportedly allowed to go home with a family member. Clark, however, spent the night in jail and was charged with a DUI.

The Independent has contacted Clark’s publicist for comment.

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Alabama law states that having a child under 14 in a vehicle while driving intoxicated is considered an aggravated circumstance, but without injury, authorities rarely seek a DUI charge enhancement, per WRBC 6 News.

Clark is a mother to two children, son Monroe, eight, and daughter Evelyn, five.

The Alabama native rose to prominence when she won season 16 of Bravo’s Top Chef in 2019. Her win significantly boosted visitors to her upscale Southern food restaurant in downtown Dothon, KBC.

“When I decided to do Top Chef, I was really concerned that it was going to be the biggest mistake of my life. I’m glad that I couldn’t have been more wrong,” she wrote on Instagram in March 2019, following her win.

“The best bonus was getting to share the journey with this group of inspiring chefs I now call friends.”

Clark is also the author of three cookbooks: Southern Grit, Southern Get-Togethers, and The Flavor of Fire, and was named a semifinalist for the prestigious James Beard Award in the Best Chef: South category in 2024.

She is set to release her third book, The Flavor of Fire, in May and is currently in the middle of a book tour that will next stop in Inlet Beach, Florida, on Friday.

She recently served as a judge on Netflix’s cooking competition show Next Gen Chef.