America's Test Kitchen Reinvents Itself in a Post-Chris Kimball Era

Last November, Christopher Kimball, the bow-tied and bespectacled exacting force behind America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated, shocked the food world when he announced he was leaving the company he founded two decades prior. Kimball’s new venture is called Milk Street Kitchen, and encompasses not only a website and a magazine but also a PBS series and a cooking school.

Following Kimball’s departure, America’s Test Kitchen is moving into an eyebrow-raising new arena: cruise ships. The company is partnering with cruise line Holland America to put replicas of the ATK television sets on-board its ships, USA Today reports. There, they’ll host cooking demos and workshops for cruisers; the first ATK-at-sea venture launches in October, and will reach the full fleet of ships by next June.

But lest you think ATK is going the way of shuffleboard and cruise ship karaoke, the company also has some big plans: According to the Boston Globe, the company now employs more than 200 people, and boasts the most popular live cooking show on air, Accordingly, after more than 20 years operating in a suburb of Boston, it’s preparing to move on up to bigger headquarters at a new building in Boston’s Seaport District, an up-and-coming part of the city that has seen major development in recent years. Per a press release, the move will nearly double the size of the company’s space, and will accommodate three TV studios as well as updated kitchens in which to continue its exhaustive recipe and equipment tests for the magazine.

Following Kimball’s departure, ATK named long-time staffers Julia Collin Davison and Bridget Lancaster as new hosts for the television show, and launched a new digital property called Cook’s Science, which focuses on “stories and recipes from the intersection of food and science,” such as a feature on the nixtamalization of corn and an examination of home coffee roasting.

• Christopher Kimball's Next Move Is... Another Test Kitchen [E]
• America’s Test Kitchen to Double Space With Move to Seaport [Boston Globe]
• Holland America Partners With 'America's Test Kitchen' [USA Today]