Ty-Lör Boring Explains His Pop-Up... Restaurant

Since his memorable run on Bravo's Top Chef, Ty-Lor Boring has been a very busy boy. He's currently operating a pop-up restaurant in Manhattan as part of New York City Fashion Week (and if you hurry you may still be able to score some tickets!), but if you can't make it to New York, don't worry--Boring is taking his show on the road. He took a few moments out of his hectic schedule to talk with us about life after reality television, what drives him to work so hard, and about his infamous nude photo spread.

So, tell us about your pop-up restaurant.

I'm going to have a pop-up for Fashion Week. So, beginning Monday February 6 through Saturday the 11th. It is at City Grit, a restaurant space in an old schoolhouse. It has a very Brooklyn feel to it, with old light bulbs and funny antiques everywhere.The menu is a $75 prix-fixe, very French and Asian-inspired with a lot of local and farmer ingredients that I am also bringing to the table. Some of the things you see on the pop-up menu might be some of the dishes that were presented in Top Chef. The starter course will be the Modernist Cuisine dish from the challenge I won on Top Chef.

What else have you been doing since Top Chef?

Since the show, I have been gathering investment capital to open a very experiential, authentic Kansas City barbecue restaurant in New York City. I will also be taking this pop-up on the road--I'll be in Milan and Paris for those fashion weeks. In March I'll be doing some dinners in St. Petersburg, Florida for their Taste of Pride to benefit Gay Pride there, that's the first weekend in March. It has also been announced that I'm the VIP Presenting Chef at the Village Voice Top Eats Festival, that's March 13th.

Wow, you are keeping busy! How much of that do you attribute to being on television?

I've been cooking for 19 years all over the world. I've been working really hard since I was a kid. I started flipping hamburgers at Sonic. I worked my way all the way to New York City. I've cooked in Europe, Africa, Asia, and all over North America.

What other kind of attention have you gotten from the show?

I'm from small town Missouri and one of the most interesting things has been the gay men from all over the world, from Singapore to Iowa to all over the world, have written me to say my story has touched them, that they also had a hard time coming out. Some kid set up an anonymous Twitter account just to tell me that because of seeing me on the show he had the courage to come out to his friends. And I think that's great, I had a really, really hard time coming out. If my story can help anyone, that is awesome.

Was that different from the attention you've gotten from posing nude?

The photos for Butt magazine weren't really pornographic in nature as much as they're just nudes. They were to prove to myself that I'm a sexy guy because those were things that I never quite heard. But they have definitely gotten me a lot of notoriety on the Internet, both good and bad. It was a chance, too, to show that I don't fit into the stereotypical mold of your average gay guy and that other types of people do exist.