Yes, this post is late; I’ve only just watched the finale last night, almost a week after it first aired………..but it compelled me to post anyway. Spoiler alerts abound for anyone out there who hasn’t watched the episode…..
For me, watching it was agony and ecstasy — Ecstasy at the perfect challenge for the final three chefs: An autobiographical meal. Wow. For these chefs, this was truly the perfect device for them to tell the story of their lives and careers and relationship with food. Watching all three meet this challenge was better tv than an entire season of Top Chef. I was positively glued to it. The courses to be prepared were as follows:
- First course: First food memory
- The second: The dish that made you want to become a chef
- The third: A dish related to the opening of your first restaurant
- The fourth: The future, and where it is/you are going
Now, the usual element in Top Chef challenges is to take a chef out of his/her comfort zone in some way; as if to say “yeah, you’re good, but what about with one hand tied behind your back“? (insert evil laugh). This was entirely different. So geared was it towards actually allowing these professionals to naturally shine, they actually delivered each contenstant’s personal sous chef to the set to help prepare the meals.
Here’s the agony: how the hell do you judge this thing? The panel of food critics were the same as the entire season, but no matter how well developed your palette is or how well you can articulate your critiques of food, there is just no clear way to judge the meals that the chefs created. Seriously, these weren’t just standalone dishes, these were exceptionally well told stories. I’m not sure the judges handled the food-as-narrative approach as best they could. The teacher in me wanted a rubric. In any case, I’m fairly certain that in this finale, the chefs outperformed the critics. I could not listen to anything that James Oseland had to say about the food without breaking out into laughter. His singular ability to pick apart dishes was utterly contrary to the mood that the challenge had set, and he had to go to such ridiculous lengths to criticize the food that it was truly comical. “Beautiful presentation, but the individual dishes were a little further apart from each other on the plate than I would have liked….”. (not actually said, but offered to illustrate my point).
So one guy walked away a winner, which meant that his designated charity received a 100k donation. But it felt all wrong this time, liking picking the best scientist from a lineup of Newton, Einstein, and Curie. This is where the show stumbled big for the first time. As an avid watcher of the show, my vote rests squarely on more time devoted to the stories behind the dishes in this challenge, making it less about who wins, because in this case, each chef was truly a winner.