A vase of white lilies and roses recently arrived in Kristen Kish’s dressing room in Milwaukee, where “Top Chef” is shooting its 21st season.

Padma Lakshmi, the model and author who became a household name during the 17 years she hosted the cooking competition show, had sent them, along with a note: “Break a leg. I’m so proud of you kiddo!”

For Kish, who was so nervous her first day on the set as Lakshmi’s replacement that she thought she might throw up, the flowers were a balm.

“I know my job is to simply be me,” Kish said, “but I feel like I am not going to be impressive enough to hold my own space and follow in Padma’s footsteps.”

Truth is, the aging “Top Chef” franchise, which has had its share of stumbles in an increasingly crowded constellation of food shows, needs her as much as she needs it. At age 39, Kish represents a third wave of chef celebrity, far removed from pioneers like Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay, and the generation of tattooed, mostly white kitchen bros who followed.

Kish is a gay Korean adoptee and a proud product of the Midwest. She hits the notes sung by culinary stars before her: She co-wrote a cookbook, opened a restaurant and makes much of her living on camera, a skill she polished on several other shows before landing the “Top Chef” job in July. On social media, she toggles seamlessly between charming brand promotions, food tips and sincere declarations — about love, self-care and even self-doubt — that can border on oversharing.

Under all her casual confidence, she said, is a foundation of crushing insecurity.

“I have severe social anxiety, and I’m on television, which is wild,” she said. “I know I’m a walking contradiction.”

That’s hard to buy when you see her stride onto the set with the command of a model (which she once was). She broke into a goofy dance one moment, then hit her mark perfectly the next. The first time she uttered, “Please pack your knives and go” — the chilling phrase Lakshmi delivered when a contestant was eliminated — the crew applauded.

“Kristen is a megawatt,” said Dana Cowin, the former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine and a “Top Chef” judge for seven seasons. She recently watched Kish confess her personal fears as she demonstrated how to make Korean-style corn dogs for a rapt audience at the Food & Wine Classic in Colorado. “She was just so vulnerable and open.”

If Kish had a brand, it might be wrapped in millennial pink and laced with the ideals of a generation that values earnestness, diversity and being nice.

“She’s been on a huge journey defining how we can be a chef in the post- celebrity-chef era and how we can think about our global community in a bigger way,” said her friend Gregory Gourdet, the Portland, Oregon, chef who was both a judge on the show and a finalist.

It all started when Kish won “Top Chef” in 2013.

“She is completely a creature of the franchise,” said Francis Lam, a frequent guest host and the vice president and editor-in-chief of Clarkson Potter, which published “Kristen Kish Cooking: Recipes and Techniques” in 2017. “On some level, she can be a little bit of a cipher. People can put a lot on her based on their assumptions.”

When Lakshmi announced that she would not renew her contract as the show’s host and executive producer, Kish was the clear choice, said Casey Kriley, a CEO of Magical Elves, the company that created the show. Executives at NBCUniversal — which owns Bravo, the network the show airs on — never interviewed anyone else, said Ryan Flynn, a senior vice president.

“She checks all the boxes,” he said.

Kish got word that “Top Chef” wanted her while flying back to the East Coast with her wife, Bianca Dusic, after doing promotional work for a hotel in Thailand.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I really wasn’t pushing for this because I never thought it was actually a possibility.”

Lakshmi was the first person she called.

“I hope I’ve been a sounding board for her over the last decade,” Lakshmi wrote in an email. “I’ve made it my mission to mentor young women like her because I didn’t have that coming up.”

Lakshmi, a victim of sexual assault, often spoke out about sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, including accusations against a “Top Chef” winner, and pushed to make the show less Eurocentric.

Kish said that although she will have no problem being blunt if she has to, she intends to focus on the work, not the politics.

“TV is populated by people who love to hear their own voice,” said Hugh Acheson, a chef who made his name with restaurants in Georgia and was a judge on the show for six seasons. “And that isn’t Kristen at all.”

Tom Colicchio, the chef who serves as the show’s head judge, said he was excited to have someone new in the mix, especially an experienced chef. “She knows what she’s doing,” he said.

Gail Simmons, the show’s other judge and a close friend of Kish, didn’t think she needed much advice: “The only concern I had was her own self-doubt.”

A precise and focused cook with French and Italian influences, Kish has long relied on organization to counter her anxiety. Growing up in a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, she kept a whiteboard in her room to keep track of her schoolwork, piano lessons and sports.

Her mother, Judy, was a high school teacher, and her husband, Michael, was an engineer at a company that made corrugated cardboard boxes. In 1984, the couple adopted the 4-month-old Kristen, who had been abandoned shortly after birth at a clinic outside Seoul, South Korea.

They strove to keep her connected to her birth country, making sure she tasted kimchi, introducing her to a Korean exchange student and reading her “The Korean Cinderella” by Shirley Climo.

Can someone who didn’t grow up in a Korean family legitimately cook the cuisine? It’s a question with which Kish grapples.

“I’m trying to own that side of me so it doesn’t feel like I’m appropriating a culture that doesn’t belong to me,” she said. “I clearly can have a point of view about Korean American food. There is a connection. I’m allowed to explore it. But for a long time, I felt guilty about it.”

Kish recently pondered how to navigate her fast- rising fame. She guards the name of the Connecticut town where she lives and is careful what she says when she’s out somewhere, because people eavesdrop.

Dusic, 44, frequently accompanies Kish when she works. At home, they putter in the garden, drink tea and are in bed by 10 p.m. It’s all about managing a life that just keeps getting bigger.

“This was never the plan,” Kish said. “The plan would have been for me to just work in a little restaurant, making ends meet, doing my life and just keep trucking along.”