Top Chef Season 4 Finale

The day has finally come. What are we all going to do with ourselves now???

Lisa, Stephanie and Richard Blaise battled it out for the title of Top Chef in Puerto Rico, with the help (sort-of) of world-renowned uberchefs : The woman from Spotted Pig, the guy who runs Blue Hill, and that tall, awesome-looking French dude with the shocking white hair and blue eyes. (Due to a spotty wireless connection, I am doing a bit of a rush job on my front stoop, so certain facts remain unresearched. Three cheers for Time Warner Cable, but at least my TV is still working!)

The requisite curve ball of tonight's competition was the sous chefs not showing up on the day of service. All three simply nodded their heads and stared when the news broke, sighing a silent, collective "Whatever".

Based on the last three season finales, I was prepared for the dinner service to be somewhat anticlimactic – when the judging is this strict and the food (allegedly) this refined, it doesn’t leave much room for high drama. Still, the tension at tonight’s service was the most I’ve felt in four seasons, and it seemed to be extremely competitive among all three. No dish crashed and burned, and no chef had more than one that the judges absolutely died for. Of the three chefs, Richard didn’t elicit an overwhelmingly positive or negative response – which made me nervous for him. I think they could have given him a break for one substandard dish if another was spectacular.

Lisa won the first unanimous praise with her second course, which was a coconut, Asian- style soup seasoned with citrus and lemongrass (I think). Stephanie’s third course – a lamb dish with olives and braised pistachios (? – again, don’t quote me on this) was a happy surprise, and was arguably the most well received dish of the total service. Everyone really liked both Richard’s (again with the banana scallops, Richard?) and Lisa’s dessert, and Stephanie’s was the clear loser. But it wasn’t a total disaster.

In the confessional commentary, Tom seemed – oddly - to be pulling for Lisa, warts and all. He made a point of saying that sometimes abrasive personalities can be an asset for a chef (you don’t say, Tom!), and seemed to be won over by her cool-as-a-cucumber act during preparation. And at the excruciating judges table faceoff, Lisa was palpably faring better than her competitors. While I was sweating bullets.

The judges are careful to remind the audience and the chefs that this game is about each individual competition, not the cumulative performance of each chef. But if they had stood by this at each finale, the outcomes might have been different. Tiffany could have taken Season 1 and Dale Season 3, but they didn’t. There was never been a completely shocking Top Chef finale, and tonight threatened to be the first.

Maybe we can thank the editing room for this, but from start to finish, the undercurrent of tonight’s episode was this question: If Lisa wins tonight’s challenge, does she deserve to be Top Chef?

When Richard copped to “choking”, I nearly swallowed my arm. On the one hand, he forced the judges to recognize that he didn’t present the best meal of the evening, but they knew that already. On the other hand, he challenged them to recognize that up until this point, he has been the most solid competitor. At least in his opinion. But while Richard’s strategy was historically apt, Stephanie could have presented the very same argument, and her meal was better than his tonight. In hindsight, Richard’s confession could have influenced more than just his own fate.

Like past seasons, the judges broke down the meal by the winners of each course, but unlike past seasons, the final decisions for each course were somewhat ambivalent – likely due to the individual preferences of each judge. It ended like this:

1^st course: Lisa/Stephanie

2^nd course: Lisa/Richard

3^rd course: Stephanie

4^th course: Richard/Lisa

I always loved Ted Allen, but I never loved him more when he said: “We agree that you liked one dish more than the other in each course, but the question is how much”. Clearly this was a nod to the fact that while Lisa may have edged out her competitors on the course-by-course tally, did she edge them out enough to win?

Fortunately for Stephanie, the answer was no. Phew!

Congratulations Stephanie. I’m really glad you won – even if you didn’t *quite* deserve it.