With last year’s “Top Chef” winner hailing from Chicago, hopes are high for this year’s local contestant.

Known to her friends and family as “Rad,” Radhika Desai said she’s more curious about her TV appearance than freaking out about it.

“[The ‘10 pounds’ that TV adds] is the least of my worries,” she said. “I just don’t want to have hair sticking out somewhere or sweating profusely all over the place-that would be worse than 10 pounds.”

Desai has gone from cooking for herself as a park ranger in Death Valley to working as a sous chef at Vermillion, 10 W. Hubbard St., to being the executive chef at Between Boutique Cafe and Lounge, 1324 N. Milwaukee Ave. She also spent some time traveling around the world, even stopping at the only six-star hotel in the world in Dubai.

Desai said she has been a fan of “Top Chef” since the first season but wasn’t sure she was ready to enter until this year.

In the season premiere on Nov. 12, Desai was in the bottom four for the first quickfire elimination, which consisted of timed apple peeling and dicing. Only when she was tested on her cooking skills and made a seared pork dish did she escape elimination. For the challenge, she had to cook Jamaican style in a head-to-head challenge, which she lost because guest judge Jean-Georges Vongerichten thought there was a lack of contrast in textures. But the judges didn’t seem too upset with her dish, overall.

When it comes to her cooking preferences at Between Boutique Cafe and Lounge, she said she wants to make dishes that people have never seen before. She said she goes for an appealing but natural look.

“I don’t want people to look at the plate and think it is too pretty or too assembled to eat,” she said.

Born and raised in Cincinnati as a first-generation Indian-American in the United States, Desai said she was brought up with a strong sense of heritage that definitely affects the way she cooks.

“I try not to be too heavy-handed with it or corner myself being an Indian chef, but they are flavors I use often,” she said.

The owner of Between Boutique Cafe and Lounge, Carl Anderson, said he first found Desai through Monster.com when he posted the ad “Looking for a chef who wants to be a rock star.” He hired her because of how well she paid attention to the guests.

“She’s like a dream come true, because I always knew that I wanted to work with a female chef,” he said. “I’ve been in the industry for a long time, but I’ve never seen anyone with a work ethic like Rad-almost to a fault. She’s almost too giving. “

Anderson said he remembers when Desai first told him about her thoughts on “Top Chef.”

“She’s like, ‘They had this breakfast challenge, and it was so lame because nobody could do it. I would have won that s–t,'” he said.

After about a month-long process of interviewing for the show, Desai called Anderson, he said, and he could only hear screaming on the other end of the line.

“I was of course very happy for her [and] excited for the restaurant …” he said. “I know it’s great for the restaurant and I know that Radhika was going to stay, but that just meant her time here was that much shorter because I wouldn’t be able to pay her what she was worth. But that was always the case.”

Anderson said Desai’s personality varies depending on what crowd she is with and what atmosphere she is in­-from one extreme to the other.

“I cannot wait to see what they captured on video because there are very little people who have seen the true Rad,” he said.

The designer of Desai’s website, also longtime friend of Anderson’s, Steve Katch, first met Desai when she started working with Anderson at Between Boutique Cafe and Lounge.

“She had a sparkle in her eyes all the time,” he said. “You could tell she was young and wanted a piece of life.”

Katch said he enjoys Desai’s lobster trifecta from Between Boutique Cafe and Lounge, but likes it best when she cooks him something special, not on the menu.

In the future, Desai wants to travel and write cookbooks with a variety of styles, she said, but for now, she is just thinking day-to-day.

Catch ‘Top Chef’ every Wednesday at 9 p.m. on BRAVO.