Spoilers for the Top Chef finale follow.
The W and I wailed in dismay last night as we watched Carla get steamrolled out of making her own food. At the start of the season we never would have guessed Carla would make it to the finale ("That's what I believe, Tom!"), but we've been rooting for her the whole way. And what got her there was staying true to herself, executing perfectly on simple dishes. So when she let Casey talk her into sous viding her beef, a technique Carla had never used before, the chorus of "Nooooooooooo!" from our living room could be heard down the block. When Casey nudged her from a cheese tart to a cheese souffle, we knew Carla was in trouble. I just felt so terrible for her. She lost for the wrong reasons, and she'll never know what would have happened if she'd only cooked her own food (or drew a different sous chef!). I think the judges would have loved to have awarded her the title, if Carla had only given them the room to do so.
But if it couldn't be Carla, at least it wasn't Stefan. The man was clearly the best chef throughout the entire season, but he was just so insufferably smug about it that each week I not-so-silently hoped for his comeuppance. Crowning him as Top Chef would have been respectable and certainly deserved, but schadenfreude was certainly more satisfying.
As for Hosea... meh. He was good but not great throughout. Head judge Tom Colicchio has long maintained that they make each decision in a vacuum, with no regard for past performance. This season's winner certainly bears that out.
Hosea won the title, but Carla won our hearts.
Posted by Peter at February 26, 2009 11:49 AM