Top Chef

View Date: 12/9/09

Tonight's episode was the finale, and it was set up to be a spectacular show of culinary craftsmanship. Leading up to the episode, the buzz on the web was most people were pulling for Kevin over either Voltaggio brother.

Side note: Those are three very tattooed men cooking tonight.

The final Elimination Challenge: Create a 3 course meal. Course 1: The chefs will receive a box, so each chef has access to the same ingredients. All of the ingredients must be used in this course. Course 2: The chefs could cook anything they wanted using anything they could find in the pantry. Course 3: Dessert. Help arrived in the form of the rest of the season's chefs. The finalists drew knives with the names of the former contestants, and each chef drew two names. One would work with them that day, while the other would work with them the day of the finale.

Note: The finalists combined to win 12 of the 13 elimination challenges.

Michael: Eli (2), Jesse (1)
Bryan: Jennifer (2), Ashley (1)
Kevin: Preeti (1), Ash (2)

The chefs opened their boxes, and seemed rather puzzled as to how to combine the variety of ingredients into a single dish. Also, as the prep day progressed, Kevin grew very frustrated in his sous chef, and was jealous that the other two chefs chose the names of the most recently-eliminated competitors.

The next morning, there was a knock on the door and the chefs were expecting some kind of twist from Padme or Tom. Instead, their mothers walked through the door and provided pep talks and encouragement on the biggest day of the competition.

They get to the restaurant to cook, where they are encountered by Tom. This is where he throws in the twist, that the chefs will now be cooking four dishes. The new first course was to be inspired by their favorite childhood dish. Kevin felt much better than the prep day, particularly because Ash took on a much heavier load than Preeti did the day before. When the chefs come out to the table, they learn that their mothers would also be eating their first course in the company of many world famous restauranteurs. After that, the mothers departed and left the tasting up to the pros.

Listening to the judges' comments, it sounds like each chef took one round a piece, with the “your choice” dish pretty much a toss up. There were only two dishes that I personally didn't hear any negative comments about from the whole meal, and that was Bryan's venison and Kevin's fried chicken skin. All of the other dishes had both positive and negative comments, as was to be expected.

Kevin was eliminated first, and he fully admitted that he just had a bad day. Therefore, it came down to the Voltaggio brothers. My favorite from the very beginning of the season has been Bryan, but in the end it was Michael who won. He received $125000 and the title of Top Chef. They both took it very well, and were proud that it came down to the two of them in the end.

10 words or less: It ended the way it should.