NEW YORK (AP) — Former "Top Chef" Fatima Ali says she has a year to live.

The 29-year-old underwent surgery to remove a tumor in January. However, Ali wrote Tuesday in an essay for Bon Appetit that the "cancer cells my doctors believed had vanished are back with a vengeance in my lift hip and femur bone." Ali says her oncologist told her she has a year to live, "with or without the new chemotherapy regimen."

She writes she used to dream of owning her own restaurant. Now she has a growing list of restaurants to visit and is "sketching a plan" to eat her way through New York.

Ali says "every day is an opportunity for me to experience something new."

Ali appeared on Season 15 of the Bravo series.