Top Chef: The finale (contains spoilers)

[Jenise]

Just watched it.

Can't believe after all this that Hosea won though I wouldn't argue that based on this episode's food alone, he won it fair and square.

And I can't believe that Carla threw it away. She went into this with more momentum than anyone. Why didn't she just take a test piece of meat, sous vide and taste that, then ask herself if this is something she should do? Casey was an idiot to suggest anything that was out of Carla's repertoire--even if it worked out, it wouldn't be authentically her own. Can't fault the souffle idea, though, it was certainly spot-on for Carla's style (and to Carla's credit, she knew exactly what was going wrong even as it went wrong), even if it did swerve Carla away from doing some apparently amazing pastry of the type that's wowed the judges more than once during the season.

Agree. Agree. Agree.

It is almost disappointing that he won...Was Stefan's dessert really that pedestrian???(Maybe the drizzled then hardened chocolate)....Carla...what can I say. WTF with the sous vide, Carla, WTF.

I will add this. Stefan TOTALLY won me over when he went over and hugged Carla and said, "Don't cry, Carla, don't cry." She knew she'd lost it at that point. I was rooting FOR Stefan and against Hosea at that point.

Just. Meh.

Agree. Agree. Agree.

It is almost disappointing that he won...Was Stefan's dessert really that pedestrian???(Maybe the drizzled then hardened chocolate)....Carla...what can I say. WTF with the sous vide, Carla, WTF.

I will add this. Stefan TOTALLY won me over when he went over and hugged Carla and said, "Don't cry, Carla, don't cry." She knew she'd lost it at that point. I was rooting FOR Stefan and against Hosea at that point.

Just. Meh.

ITA. In fact, I liked Stephan from the beginning. I think he is an excellent chef and I really felt he should have won. I knew he was a softy at heart...I just melted when he got upset when Carla started to cry. I loved his confidence...but "cocky" guys do it for me LOL! Anyway, I wished Carla had not done the sous vide...her sous chef was really annoying, but in the end Carla should have stood her ground. So, I must say, I am a bit disappointed that Stephan was not chosen...but C'est la vie!

[Jenise]

Agree. Agree. Agree.

It is almost disappointing that he won...Was Stefan's dessert really that pedestrian???(Maybe the drizzled then hardened chocolate)....Carla...what can I say. WTF with the sous vide, Carla, WTF.

I will add this. Stefan TOTALLY won me over when he went over and hugged Carla and said, "Don't cry, Carla, don't cry." She knew she'd lost it at that point. I was rooting FOR Stefan and against Hosea at that point.

Just. Meh.

For all that I liked Carla, I really expected Stefan to win and felt that based on the season as a whole, he was the most deserving (of these three, I still think Jeff was the best and classiest chef of all). By the same token, Hosea was the least of the three and since we're talking sous chef involvement one has to ponder the role Richard Blaise played in Hosea's foods. Hosea's lackluster (and technically unskilled) sushimi seemed to have been Hosea's own, but that second course with the scallop on pain perdu and foie gras foam--I didn't see anything in Hosea all year long that suggested he could think up, let alone pull off, a dish as refined and pulled together as that on his own. Bet Richard made the whole thing--ya think?

Speaking of sous chefs, apparently Casey's getting blamed for pulling the popular Carla down, and she sent this email to some emagazine:

"Carla was not prepared and in over her head. The show did not talk about how the first course (crab) took her half of the friggin’ cooking time that day, I was left to work the rest of HER dishes. She also did not have a plan. The ONLY thing she had in mind was a cheese course! I would NEVER do a cheese course. And where in the hell did french come from!? She is not even classically trained! It (the show) didn’t talk about how I worked on a sauce for 2 days and Carla forgot to put it on the plate… It didn’t show how the 2nd course (fish) was MINE. It didn’t show how she took the sous vide idea and decided to GRILL it last minute causing it to be tough… And it didn’t show how she WANTED to do the souffles which she does not even know how to make! That was HER food, because it certainly was me asking her how she wanted to do this and that while she was busy picking crab the entire time and making a souffle that didn’t rise! I am done with TC. I did not influence her. She has NO ideas of her own, oh, except a cheese course."

Interesting Jenise, thanks for posting that...just goes to show how much these kind of "reality shows" are really just staged.

Here's another quote from yahoo news:

Question: Yeah, there's a lot of talk and Internet buzz this morning that you lost because of Casey, that you shouldn't haven't listened to her. Do you agree?

Carla: I really feel badly for her, because, you know, it did not even occur to me to blame her in any way. I definitely take responsibility for everything that we did, and she helped me in many ways. But at the time, I was thinking, you know, why not? Go big or go home. But the win for me was to have the love and that 65 percent of the people were pulling for me. It's a different kind of a prize.

[David M. Bueker]

I was never a Hosea fan. Fabio got jobbed, so the whole finale never really interested me.

As for Stefan and Carla I would say that 90% of people will have more fun eating food prepared by Carla. Stefan will probably be able to dazzle folks, but Carla's food will likely have more soul and character.

The ONLY thing she had in mind was a cheese course!"

Hmm - I'd have said she had nothing but cheese souffle in her mind, but what do I know. New age flake, nice but ineffective. Loser from the git go in my book.

I agree about Jeff, and failing him, Stefan, but not the obviously less knowledgeable Hosea.

Well at least it was more interesting that the F***-ups on Ramsay's show, no doubt chosen at least in part because they will make a nice spectacle as the predictably crash in flames.

[Jenise]

Fabio got jobbed, so the whole finale never really interested me.

What Fabio got, getting axed at the final four level and then getting to be a judge at the same table at the Commanders Palacce with people like Susan Spicer and John Besh, was the next best thing to winning the hundred grand IMO. And he seemed to know it as he was quite gracious and kind when asked to comment on the dishes.

Hosea won by playing it safe the whole competition. I think that technically, he is very good (though Jeff and Stefan are probably better), but I do believe that he is one of the weakest winners of all the seasons.
Carla has only herself to blame. The souffle fiasco reminds me of her performance in Restaurant Wars.
This was Stefan's battle to lose and he did. As Fabio said in one of the episodes: It doesn't matter how many dragons you slay, whoever takes the princess home wins. The risk was not in doing the dessert but in the presentation of said dessert. One comment I read was that the plate looked like someone hit the dessert buffet at a Bar Mitzvah.

Over the whole season, I would eat Carla's food over most stuff prepared by Hosea or Stefan. I also liked the looks of many of Fabio's dishes, though not as many as Carla's.

Carla often had the good sense to keep it simple. Using so many flavours that it all gets muddled is a common mistake that some of the others made.

Here is Carla's dog, amazed that she didn't win.....

I thought Carla was out of her league from the beginning. We really can't blame Casey for Carla's decision to include a technique with which she wasn't familiar. Amateur mistake to think that someone else's idea is better than yours! And, we all know that souffle is tempermental. How could you not have checked the oven temp, amount of floor jarring, door slamming, etc. Come on, Carla. From the beginning I didn't think she had the right stuff. As a good cook, maybe -- but not a chef.

I also said fairly early on that it was going to be a heads up between Hosea and Stefan. I really liked Stefan and his cockiness. It was clear he had great cooking chops. But, he was far more comfortable with menus that had a more European flair. He often called other food types and cooking techniques bullshit. Frustration from unfamiliarity, IMO. But, you underestimate Hosea. Go back and listen to his commentary as they were preparing dishes for the challenges. Just based on what he said he clearly had an understanding of food and flavor pairings, technique (remember, he predicted that the judges were not going to pick Stefan's gumbo because he didn't prepare the roux correctly), and he really knows his seafood (though that eel trick threw him). He did not have the culinary sophistication of Stefan because he was not classically trained. But, I believe he was every bit the chef of Stefan, just different genres. The right man won!

Just watched it.
And I can't believe that Carla threw it away. She went into this with more momentum than anyone. Why didn't she just take a test piece of meat, sous vide and taste that, then ask herself if this is something she should do? Casey was an idiot to suggest anything that was out of Carla's repertoire--even if it worked out, it wouldn't be authentically her own.

Jenise, I agree here completely. I asked myself while watching--why would she do something she has never done? I also thought the "meat and potatoes comfort food" concept was seriously wrong for a last meal to show your best stuff. Also agree with you that Stefan showed the most consistently well-turned-out food over the whole season, and that Hosea had an Ace in the hole with Richard as his sous chef.

Stefan's dessert did look like a train wreck to me. As Barb would say, WTF??? Why didn't he just make one amazing dessert instead of all of these little goofy bites of stuff? It DID look like he hit the dessert buffet at a bar mitzvah. I think it would have cinched it for him to have pulled out a great dessert, which we all know he is capable of.

Bill, you are bad, but I'm still laughing over that photo of the dog.