Candied squash
Top Chef finales, piles of beef, and unfortunate controversies
Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a review of the Top Chef: Portland finale. My name is Randall Colburn and I am going to make fun of Richard Blais a lot. Read last week’s recap here.
Top Chef finales can sort of feel like a blur. We’re usually seeing anywhere from eight to 16 dishes, all of which are endlessly complex and given upwards of a minute to get consumed and unpacked by the judges. The kitchen is a maelstrom of bubbling sauces, resting meats, and pinching tweezers, the chefs sweaty messes too goddamned busy to reflect or fight or deliver the kind of drama we’ve come to expect from season finales. It’s rare that anyone truly biffs a finale. It’s rare for it be absolutely obvious who wins. The judges are debating variations of excellence, and that can be difficult for a viewer who isn’t also eating the food to fully register. Restaurant Wars tends to be what fans remember about any given season; there’s more people, more failure, more drama, and less consistency. Contrasts serve the memory.
I’d say the same goes for this finale, another solid if unexciting end to a lovely season that will be more remembered for its depth of humanity, its cultural diversity, and its colorful characters than it will the food of this finale. Some dishes, like Dawn’s yam bread pudding, are the kind that you can taste with your eyes, but others felt alien to me. When it’s buried amongst 11 other dishes, it’s hard to get a grasp on why Gabe’s candied squash was so revelatory and indicative, per Melissa, of the future of Mexican cuisine. Cramming 12 dishes of such technical and cultural complexity into a single episode dulls the impact somewhat. Still enjoyable, of course, but I think that’s why finales are never quite what I look forward to in any given season of Top Chef. It’s about the journey, man.
The pig head was cool, though.
The episode begins with the chefs meeting Tom and Padma at Willamette Valley Vineyards, where they’re tasked with preparing the best four-course progressive meal of their lives. From the fog emerges Byron, Jamie, and Maria, who link up with Shota, Dawn, and Gabe, respectively, to serve as sous chefs. No drama here, as everyone gets the person best suited to their style. Shota gets Byron, classically trained and perfectly capable of the precision needed to pull off his technique-forward Japanese food. Dawn nabs Jamie, who exudes the spark and vitality at the heart of her soulful Southern food. And Gabe gets Maria, who I’d wager was a huge factor in his win. She’s talented as hell, she gets his food, and she believes in him so much. Her adoration of Gabe and his food, not to mention her fierce confidence in him, was probably the most moving part of the episode for me. It’s hard to imagine anyone being able to topple that team-up.
Tom informs them they have six hours today and three hours tomorrow to cook, and that they’ll be able to hit up local farms and specialty shops to gather ingredients. The best part? Their ride.
It will never not be funny to me when Tom is forced to shill for sponsors. I can just picture him off-camera repeating “BMW X6M” under his breath over and over. (Also funny: Padma, the ad copy so baked into her cadence, being unable to tell Gabe he won $250,000 without adding “furnished by San Pellegrino” to the end. It’s like a reflex for her. Even in the midst of celebration she sticks the landing.)
Tom when he’s handed another BMW press release:
Gabe uses his menu to tell the story of his journey as a chef, drawing upon dishes and techniques that reflect his heritage and his travels throughout Mexico. Dawn folds in pan-African influences into her Southern fare, and works to honor late New Orleans legend Leah Chase—a guest judge on Top Chef: New Orleans—with a gumbo inspired by Chase’s creole cuisine. Shota wants to highlight Japanese food with an emphasis on technique, but his lack of thematic specificity comes back to haunt him later when his casual and humble Japanese curry clashes with the fine dining fare he serves up in the other courses.
Quick aside to point out this adorable Shota/Jamie flirting:
After their first day of cooking, the chefs are met at home by the guest judges. It only just really occurred to me that some judges, like Carrie and Amar, just disappeared as others came in. Assuming they died of COVID. Dale informs them that “you three have to choose one of us to cook against, and the loser will be going home.” I can tell they came up with this bit right before the chefs got there because it doesn’t really make sense. What if Gabe chooses Dale and beats him? Does that mean Dale goes home? What if they all lose against the judge they chose? No finale?
Anyways, it’s just a bit Dale cackles and claps in their faces. Dawn’s face is sending me.
The judges prepare some beautiful dishes. Dale, for example, made a gorgeous Dungeness crab rice. Gregory made duck curry. And Blais?
“Pile O Beef.”
When someone serves me Pile O Beef:
I’m too exhausted to talk about how Dawn left components off plates for, like, the 15th time in a row, so let’s just look at the courses:
Course 1
Shota’s sashimi three ways: mackerel, salmon, and tuna with soy sauce
Melissa: “Shota’s dish is stunning. It’s so clear and focused. The flavors are very clean.”
Gregory: “Using three very fatty fish just really delivered on flavor.”
Tiffany: “The acidity from the pickled daikon left a very clean, delicious flavor.”
Blais: “A light start, but really big on flavor and precision. It was one of my favorite dishes of the whole night.”
Melissa: “Pretty flawless.”
Dawn’s lamb tartare with tomato and celery salad, beef tendon puff, and rice honey bread
Blais: “Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have two elements of Dawn’s plate.”
Padma: “Out of all three courses I think Dawn’s is the most dynamic, but she didn’t need 15 ingredients on this first course.”
Nina: “I told her last night, less is more.”
Naomi: “I wish Dawn would’ve just gone chili, bread, and tartare. The chicharrones were really delicious but maybe we could’ve had one or the other.”
Tom: “Yeah but they’re done ahead of time. You just put em on a plate. Nothing here is a la minute, it’s all cold!”
Melissa: “With Dawn missing these components, it’s inexcusable at this point.”
Gabe’s fried cochinita pibil head cheese with habenero ash emulsion, avocado mousse, and kumquat sauce
Tom: “I think Gabe gave us a very beautiful first course.”
Dale: “This is an amazing way to start a finale. It’s pretty special. The three sauces on Gabe’s plate were fantastic.”
Gail: “The flavor in that beautiful rectangle was deep and rich, especially with that kumquat sauce.”
Random guy: “The pibil head cheese wasn’t as crispy as I would have liked.”
Tom: “The breading on the head cheese was just wrong.”
Course 2
Shota’s sautéed water spinach, sautéed burdock root, white miso burdock root puree with octopus karage
Dale: “I thought Shota’s was a perfect second course. It almost read to me like a warm salad.”
Melissa: “I love burdock, but it did feel like a vegetable side dish.”
Ed: “I thought it was pretty oily.”
Melissa: “It was a very bold and confident move to go with a vegetable dish.”
Dawn’s green gumbo with seafood and fermented rice fritter
Padma: “I love Dawn’s gumbo.”
Melissa: “I did really enjoy the flavors of her dish. My one concern was the octopus, for me it was undercooked.”
Nina: “There was too much seafood.”
Tom: “Yeah, it doesn’t connect to the gumbo, but, that said, there’s something enjoyable about the dish.”
Ed: “I love the hush puppy.”
Padma: “I love how you elevated something so personal to you and so homey, it was fantastic. And that fritter was divine.”
Tom: “I liked the gumbo part of it but I felt like the seafood was somewhat disconnected from it.”
Gabe’s scallop aguachile with fermented pineapple and roasted scallop oil
Padma: “I keep going back into Gabe’s for that gorgeous sauce.”
Ed: “I love this dish. The sweetness was surprising, but it worked with the scallop.”
Gail: “I was really trying to figure out that sweetness, but knowing it’s pineapple I think is really amazing.”
Brooke: “This is the most refined dish I’ve gotten from Gabe.”
Melissa: “Your placement of the scallop dish as a second course was brilliant. It was this beautiful bright palate cleanser, this broth used with kombucha, it was mind-blowing.”
Gail: “It’s like poetry.”
Course 3
Shota’s beef tongue curry with braised turnips and fukujinzuke pickles
Gregory: “This tongue curry, this is stunning.”
Ed: “Shota’s dish kind of got me a little emotional. To see something that kids would make fun of me for eating at school on Top Chef, TO ME is a very special moment and I absolutely love this dish. Having said that, the rice is a little crunchy.”
Melissa: “he did a great job making a true version of it, but it’s a little staff mealy.”
Kwame: “It’s the plating.”
Gail: “It was completely intoxicating. I was really happy to hear it came from a really deep place of love. I do think that as a finale meal it could’ve been presented in a slightly different way. It was from your casual concept, but we started at your fine dining.”
Parma: “For me, the rice was not cooked all the way.”
Melissa: “I wanted to see him push himself a little more. I felt like we were eating at two different restaurants with Shota.”
Dawn’s braised beef, black-eyed peas, and buttered turnips
Brooke: “Dawn presented one of my favorite dishes of the evening. That beef cheek was super tender, those black-eyed peas, astounding.”
Kwame: “Flawless. I don’t have a busted pea on my plate.”
Melissa: “Your beef cheeks were like heart and soul in a bowl. The star of it all were those black-eyed peas.”
Padma: “They just smelled and tasted of the garden.”
Gabe’s short ribs with chichilo negro mole, mushrooms, and pickled persimmons
Ed: “This is typical Gabe cooking. To me, the sauce is the most beautiful thing in all three dishes.”
Gregory: “All the subtleties of that black mole, it is probably my favorite sauce of the evening.”
Gail: “His mushrooms, he charred some of them so much, which just added an intensely bitter note.”
Naomi: “The bitterness, I didn’t mind it. I like a bitter with a short rib.”
Tom: “It was really, really delicious, but a lot of people thought the mushrooms were overcooked.”
Course 4
Shota’s hoji tea cheesecake with cedar smoked gelato
Blais: “Shota’s dish, the presentation is so beautiful.”
Kwame: “If I was going to go to a restaurant and order a dessert, it would be Shota’s dessert. I love the airiness in the cheesecake.”
Gail: “I did really like the smoked ice cream on Shota’s dish but it totally overpowered the subtlety of the cheesecake.”
Blais: “I loved the texture of that cheesecake, it didn’t feel heavy like cheesecake sometimes can feel.
Padma: “I loved your smoky ice cream, it was so unexpected.”
Blais: “It was technical, intellectual, creative.”
Dawn’s yam bread pudding with butter pecan anglaise and purple yam and apple compote
Tiffany: “Dawn’s yam bread pudding is taking me home! The yams and the apple and the pecan cream anglaise is just so delicious.”
Brooke: “While I love all the flavors, this feels a little bit basic for a finale dessert.”
Tom: “This should be on everyone’s Thanksgiving table. It reminded me of autumn.”
Gail: “She showed us she could make a bread pudding like none I’ve ever had.”
Gabe’s candied delicata squash with cafe Mexicano ice cream
Dale: “I love the sticky toffee quality to the squash. You could put that on a Michelin star tasting menu now.”
Melissa: “It made me think of where is Mexican cuisine going? And that’s what he’s showing us right now.”
Tom: “Just a study in textures. Everytime you took a bite, it changed.”
Blais: “One word for this word: fearless. It’s the Top Chef finale and we’re gonna roast some squash for dessert.”
Melissa: “Chef to chef, your dessert inspired me. It really felt like I was sitting in Mexico City at a Michelin star restaurant.”
Gail: “He gave us something that was very innovative, marrying these Mexican flavors into such a modern approach of a dessert. Gabe really took us on a journey through Mexico.”
Personally, I began pegging Gabe as the winner around course three. Dawn’s missing components, plus the criticisms they had about her gumbo, seemed to spell doom for her, and I knew Shota was out when they said his rice was crunchy. Gabe, meanwhile, executed flawlessly. The biggest criticisms—the head cheese breading and the cook on the mushrooms—were things he stood behind and can be attributed to personal taste. Naomi, for example, defended the char on the mushrooms. Any of them could’ve taken it, but, by technical standards alone, Gabe was unparalleled in this particular meal.
Several weeks back, I brought up Gabe’s firing from Comedor in Austin last year for “repeated violations of our policies and for behavior in conflict with our values.” Now that the season has concluded, the reports have resurfaced and Padma’s addressed it via Twitter.
Gabe also gave a new interview to the Austin American-Statesman about the situation. It’s behind a paywall, but apparently the situation stems from a consensual affair he had with a staffer last summer and how, after returning from Top Chef, he cut her hours because of an alleged decline in her performance. “After I returned from Top Chef, I made some business decisions as a manager that affected this employee and were found to be discriminatory and I realized that those were bad decisions,” he explained. “I’ve spent the last six months really reflecting on these mistakes and taking the necessary steps to be a better husband, a father, a chef and a leader, through therapy, through spirituality.”
The whole situation remains vague, but there’s hints in the Statesman that production knew more than they’re letting on. Also, Gregory made a very pointed post a few hours before the finale aired about “industry worker abuse” and “bad behavior of chefs,” one that Padma liked. As the below tweet notes, it’s notable that Philip Speer, the chef who fired Gabe from Comedor, commented on Gregory’s post.
Gregory also appears to allude to Top Chef in his post: “Yes media needs to do a better job vetting people. I need to do a better job vetting people…Media has immense power in the lifting of voices and the success of establishments. This is the next major shift that needs to happen…Our industry has a long way to go and I wonder if we will ever get there but I’m not giving up…Basic human decency is just the starting point of our survival. So is the end of power hungry, abusive, egomaniacal chef.”
Others have been digging up some of the Reddit discourse going on around Gabe, as well as on other social platforms. These are unverified reports, but the level of detail and the consistency of the narratives feels notable. (I’ve also read more posts beyond these on Reddit.)
An absolute bummer end to a beautiful season of television, but is it really even that surprising anymore? I’ve watched a number of reality shows I love, from The Bachelor to The Challenge, have to reckon with the fact that they’ve saddled themselves with some real pieces of shit. Sometimes you can edit around the tumor—Top Chef did it with John Besh a few seasons back—and other times, like with Gabe, you have no choice but to actually address the problem. And good, they should address it. They should institute better and more efficient vetting practices. Red flags aren’t always obvious, but, according to several accounts, allegations against Gabe go back years.
Me having to end my Top Chef blog on this note:
But, hey, as I wrote above, Top Chef’s all about the journey, not the end. It’s been an absolute blast writing about this season and engaging with all of you. Not sure what the future of this blog is, but, if you’re subscribed, you’ll find out about it when I do.
I leave you with Ed’s dumb hat. It should be on Tom’s head.
I'm on the west coast. Your recaps landed in my inbox before the episode aired, taunting me to read like a Top Chef Stanford marshmallow experiment. The delayed gratification was always worth it. A great season of recaps. I hope Tom Colicchio buys more insane hats for next season.
Top Recap! Worthy of a feature in Food & Wine & Recap Magazine