Top Chef: Wisconsin Finale Recap: Yes, Chef

Going into “Cruising to a Win,” it felt like any of the three Top Chef: Wisconsin finalists had an equal chance at pulling away. This season has been up and down in a lot of ways (Kristen’s effectiveness as a host, the vagueness of certain challenges, the seeming conspiracy to get Soo from Last Chance Kitchen onto Top Chef proper), but Danny, Dan, and Savannah have each had little paths of glory. Danny was the clear and early favorite thanks to his creativity and fine-dining experience. Dan had the overcoming-obstacles narrative as the chef who tried out for the series 11 times, and was one of the judges’ favorites often enough that he proved his Kennedy’s disease diagnosis wouldn’t hold him back. Savannah went on a late-season tear, winning challenge after challenge and taking risks that revealed her growing confidence. Each seemed potentially worthy… until Danny pulled out the shell-shaped cookie mold, started punching little flowers out of his produce, and served one of his sauces in a conch. Those are Buddha Lo moves, and they are catnip for Top Chef judges.

The Elimination challenge is very straightforward: Each chef needs to cook a four-course progressive meal. Interestingly, although the cruise ship is now in Aruba, there’s no real emphasis from the judges that the chefs use island flavors or their location as inspiration; “just blow us away,” As guiding inspirations for their final meals, Savannah and Danny land on similar ideas revolving around important food memories, while Dan goes with a “living in the moment” idea inspired by Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s suggestion in the previous episode that they all enjoy this cooking experience and not overthink it. Then it’s time to pick sous chefs from Laura, Amanda, Michelle, Manny, Soo, and Kaleena, and Dan picks his former Damanda teammate, Savannah picks her friend and fellow Southerner Michelle, and Danny picks Manny, a choice that makes me say “Oh no” out loud. I love Manny, and Manny has fine-dining experience, too, but Danny seems like a demanding, exacting person to work for, and I am not sure how this pairing is going to work!

After broadly discussing their meal ideas (Danny is doing all seafood; Savannah is bringing in Southern inspiration; Dan is working up a menagerie of flavors), they go shopping, and this is where I tell you that perhaps the only dramatic part of this first half of the episode is when Danny keeps losing Manny: “Biggest dude in the grocery store, and I couldn’t find him.” A little montage of the two of them walking around the grocery store in circles, recurrently missing each other? It is clichéd and great. Sure, Dan has a little hiccup when a grocery store employee cooks his sardines instead of cleaning them and he has to pivot to snapper, but isn’t that really just a meta reflection of his living-in-the-moment theme?

Back in the cruise ship’s (still cramped) kitchen, the chefs get to prepping and meeting Emeril Lagasse, and it’s very cute that basically all of them are starstruck. Savannah has Laura working on pasta dough after she unexpectedly did so well with fresh pasta in the season premiere. Dan is working on a dish inspired by Danny’s soba cha buckwheat tea from two earlier challenges. And unsurprisingly, Danny is pushing Manny to move faster and do more, and there’s a bit of tension between them when Danny learns that Manny juiced all the melon he had bought for his dessert, when some of that melon was meant to be kept behind for melon balls. Whoops! But Danny decides to do a lemon relish instead, and given how much the judges loved his lemon and hazelnut relish from last week, that seems like a smart choice. He’s also candying seaweed, which sounds deranged, but maybe that’s actually the perfect salty-sweet snack I’ve been searching for all my life? I will remain open-minded!

One of the biggest changes this season has been the focus on quality time between Kristen, the other judges, and the competing chefs, and we get some more of that with breakfast the morning of the finale. Kristen cries, everyone talks about how meaningful this experience has been, and Tom gives Savannah a thumbs-up for clarifying that she’s a UNC fan instead of a Duke fan, which might be the most humanizing thing Tom has ever done and it makes me love him a little bit. (I am obligated as a Terp from when UMD was in the ACC with Duke to believe that they will always be the worst.) Then, it’s time for more prep, and for me to cackle in wild, shocked indignation when Danny gives Manny a full list of tasks and tells him “All these … should, total, take you 40 minutes.” Joel McHale in The Bear, you would be proud! And, bless him, Manny really tries, charring the cabbage Danny wanted with extra care and noticeably panicking when he realizes that he didn’t cook the spiny-lobster tails all the way through. This man just wanted to do a good job for Danny, and there’s a purity there that I adore.

There are issues in the kitchen, though, outside of Danny and Manny’s dynamic. Dan likes the texture of his sous-vide tuna, but I’m not sure seafood should ever be described as “jammy,” and Savannah realizes that her pasta dough has an off texture. Of course, both of these wrinkles become problems during judging. For reading ease, I’m going to write out each chef’s final meal:

Dan 

First course: Tuna tartare, Ruby Red grapefruit, Caribbean pepper puree, black garlic labneh

Second course: Grilled snapper, ginger, scallions, braised pumpkin, smoked snapper dashi

Third course: Oxtail ragu, yeasted dumpking, pikliz

Fourth course: Yogurt mousse with coriander and olive oil, salted phyllo crisps, grilled pineapple

Danny 

First course: Scallop and habanero leche de tigre, breadfruit and nori tuile

Second course: Smoked mussels, plantain, charred cabbage

Third course: Spiny lobster with salsa macha, squash and persimmon, and Burmese curry-style chaaza sauce

Fourth course: Piragua con leche, inspired by Puerto Rican shaved ice, with melon sorbet, acodado yogurt, candied seaweed, condensed milk antigriddle stamp

Savannah 

First course: Saltfish fritter, sweet potato puree, pickled mussels, habanero honey glaze

Second course: Spiny lobster agnolotti, lobster broth, almonds, grapes

Third course: Seared grouper, mofongo plantains, butter sauce

Fourth course: Hummingbird banana upside cake, lime pineapple granita, rum coconut sauce

The first course is basically a wash, with Dan’s appetizer praised for its “addictive” taste, Savannah’s fritter for its crunch, and Danny’s scallop for its perfect cookery. Dan seemingly gains an edge with the second course because Savannah’s dish is so flawed (her pasta dough brittle, the almonds unnecessary) and because no one knows how to eat Danny’s stack of ingredients. Savannah stays at a lower tier with her third course (all the judges criticize her plantains for not being a proper mofongo), while Dan and Danny seem tied up, and the judges particularly love Danny’s two sauces. And the final course is another potential tie, because every judge has separate praise for each dessert. But when Kristen called Danny’s dessert a “perfect end” to the meal and Tom said it was bound to be a signature dish? That was a tip-off that Danny’s errors (not enough salt in his appetizer, not providing directions for his second course, unevenly cooked lobster in the third round) were judged less egregious than either Dan’s or Savannah’s, and he ends up as the first Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Muslim Top Chef. Alhamdulillah, Danny! Enjoy all that cash.

Looking back on this season overall, I’m grateful Top Chef abandoned the hyper-manic look of its premiere episode, and ultimately I came around on Tom and Gail joining Kristen in Quickfire challenge judging. I also think it’s nice for the competitors that there was sizable prize money being thrown around, even if it was funded by a sponsor with a serious recent scandal. The latter two feel like changes that are going to help Top Chef be a better experience for both its contestants and its viewers (and any other institutions looking to improve their damaged reputations). I’m still unconvinced on whether Kristen can bring more to the judging gig than her past win, I think the contestant pool this season could have been stronger, and I am certain that Last Chance Kitchen should only be for eliminated chefs, not a horrible obstacle course for someone to try and make it into the show from the beginning. But Top Chef is moving on, and so must we, until season 22. And if you still miss Padma Lakshmi, may I interest you in her comedy?

• Tom hat watch: We’re never going to have it this good ever again.

• The dishes I most wanted to eat this episode, course by course: Savannah’s saltfish hushpuppy; Danny’s smoked mussels; Danny’s spiny lobster; and Savannah’s hummingbird cake. It was pretty clear that Savannah wasn’t going to win, but I thought her dishes had an appealing coziness.

• Remember when I said last week, “If someone makes an aguachile for the final challenge, I swear I will track down Tom and eat one of his hats”? Danny saying he was considering making an aguachile had me very concerned! I lucked out with that leche de tigre pivot! I’m slightly shocked he didn’t make anything involving his beloved carrots, though.

• I always wonder what happens to the competitors who could be picked as sous chefs for the finalists but are then passed over. Do they still get to hang out in the finale-episode destination? Do Kaleena, Laura, and Soo get a little vacation, or are they just immediately sent back home? The latter feels like a difficult thing to do when you’re all on a cruise ship together.

• Loved to see Aruba-is-windy representation when the competitors met on the cruise ship’s deck for Elimination challenge details. My partner and I traveled there about a decade ago, and those trade winds are no joke!

• Should we add fresh pasta to the list of dishes contestants should stop attempting on Top Chef? It very rarely seems to pay off! Move over, risotto.

• Thank you to everyone for reading recaps this season!