I love Marcus Samuelson. He would be fabulous!
Buddha has pretty much flawless technique and I thought all along that he would win. Sara had an outside chance but the undercook on the liver did her in. I’m sure Gabi’s dishes had big flavors but he needs to work on technique to elevate them. Mexican dishes will always be hard to be justly judged by some French chefs.
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Because I am biased, didn’t want to say this based on my gut from last night, but Tom Colicchio tweeted that had Sara’s liver been cooked fully, she would have been the winner. Per her IG video, evidently he told her had it been overcooked a little she would have been okay, but undercooked killed her.
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Good article. I agreed with many parts of it. I didn’t think Sara was going to win after the liver issue, so I was rooting for Gabri because his dishes seemed interesting. Buddha’s dishes, while stunning looking, just, imo, did seem overly calculated and somewhat boring.
When I was reading the article- one person immediately came to mind that I hope isn’t the next Padma- and that’s Melissa King. Whenever she was a guest judge, she always seemed to want to speak too much- almost in an interrupting way. I would prefer Kristen Kish. However, would love Marcus Samuelson as he is always so cheerful and critical in a nice way.
I wonder how Sara’s pea cake tastes!!
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I did not watch the show but followed recaps. 
This might be the pea cake - ? Looks simple and delicious.
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I have never had pea cake when it has been on menu at FH, but evidently it is going back on menu tonight along with mushroom soup. I would like to try it as well. One of my friends had her pea soup when I ate at Freight House in early May and it looked scrumptious.
Fun fact: Just finished listening to Sara’s Friday live IG and Bev, her mom, was out of the room when Sara talked about her and the pictures were shown. Thank goodness for DVRs! Bev is a delightful person.
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I always think I like the other episodes of the season more than the finale. I love the “helpers” who came back - was interesting to me that Ali was last picked - I think he was the most skilled of the 3.
I can’t help but feel there is a little bitterness towards Buddha simply for being incredibly skilled. They all are of course - but you can’t deny his consistency for 2 whole seasons.
Padma’s Instagram has shown several videos and reels about this being her finale too.
Highly recommend watching her Taste Of The Nation!
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I absolutely believe Sara would have won if not for the liver mistake. But sounds like it was a pretty big mistake - Gail said it was not even possible to chew it.
It is too bad people (and the article) are sorting of bashing Buddha for being a technically talented chef. He rose to most of the challenges, even those that required cooking with feeling. While there was certainly some “Buddha fatigue”, it is hard to argue with a winner that has won so many of the challenges along the way to the finale.
My guess is they will have a woman to replace Padma. Interesting to see if they bring in someone new to the show or a former contestant.
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I actually thought some of the people quoted in the article bordered on being racist – their comments implied that Buddha was another overachieving Asian who succeeded through gaming the system. Sound familiar? While we cannot taste his food, he makes technically precise beautiful food, which makes for great food porn. That he has studied the game makes him no different than the top competitors on other reality shows, like Survivor and The Amazing Race. As one of the other authors said, if they want to change the nature of the competition, then change the challenges. I prefer the more recent version though where cooking triumphs over gimmicks and drama. If I want that, I can watch Hell’s Kitchen.
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I like Sarah and I feel she has really showed her chops this season. But we certainly wouldn’t have expected Buddha to win if he put raw liver on a plate. These are a top three - no one is going to put out less than pretty excellent food outside of a unplanned misjudgement - which the liver was.
If I’m Germany or France or whatever country I might also think it was suspect that 2 of the 3 were Americans on an American show! Draw whatever conspiracy you like! 
Buddha should not have to apologize for his win or his not exciting personality or that he studied and prepped (which I’m sure the others do to some degree!) before the season.
Shame on Tom or any of the crew IF they diminish his win at all. Praise them all, give them their due, don’t overshadow all the good work they did.
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Right, why criticize him for studying before the competition. Great players in any field study and try to figure out the rules and their fellow competitors. Any of the other contestants could have also prepared thoroughly. I really don’t get all the negativity toward him.
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I can’t find exactly what Tom said about Buddha’s win, saying that Sara would have won except for her liver. The liver was inedible so it seems kind of goofy to say someone would have won if only for…
Do you have the exact quote?
Which I’ll say that his comments above are NOT anti-Buddha.
I’ll be honest, at the judges table, I almost felt that they DIDN’T want to grant Buddha the win. This is just a read of the frustration on their faces. Maybe they knew that Buddha winning was just so expected - and reality LOVES the unexpected.
Think about it. Reality shows are ALWAYS edited to keep you interested and have you loving/hating - or back and forth on people. Even with the edit, Buddha was pretty far and above in wins at the very least of all the contestants. Perhaps he stood out even more - but they tried to tone down the edit so it wasn’t too obvious? These are just guesses.
4 courses of your best meal. He came away with very little criticism on 4/4. Sarah had a couple of outstanding courses but still walks away with 3/4. And Tom did say (twitter)and has said in the past, the winner is not about past performance but the performance at the finale. Whether we like that or not!!
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Exactly. If based on all challenges, Buddha was the guy from the beginning. And I like Buddha— don’t know why people are so anti-Buddha. Even Sara had tv moments where you know she was also studying the competition and I am sure strategizing.
For the finale, assuming no mistakes on dishes (overcooked, undercooked), if I had to choose a 4 course meal, I would have wanted to try Gabri’s dishes.
If it wasn’t Top Chef, I would be thinking producer driven conspiracy theories. Because I find it inconceivable that Sara would not have tested and retested her protein for the finale. It’s an egregious error at that level of competition for so talented of a chef - especially for a last minute plating. Could something have gone badly askew with the oven heat and she realized it too late? And then to actually plate the clearly undercooked/raw liver - better to have sent the plates out without it. Not a winning dish (onions and cookie butter and figs and sauce, I guess) but one that didn’t appall the judges. With editing it’s hard to know exactly what happened. Could she have sabotaged herself on purpose although I can’t imagine why? She looked so resigned from that point on.
I did like the culinary sophistication of all the guests at the table. We got some different kinds of evaluations. And some lovely accents.
Didn’t Amar want to slice and plate earlier and Sara brushed him off? I think she was confident of the cook and did not want the liver to lose moisture. She even said later that if she had cut it earlier, she could have saved the dish by a quick flash in the salamander.
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That’s what the edit showed, but how could she have not had an extra piece to test? Rookie mistake.
Sara said on yesterday’s IG live that she has been kicking herself for 9 months about not cutting the liver to check it. She went into lots of detail about where they were allowed to shop and how she was unable to buy her first two choices for a liver, foie and veal sweetbreads (hope I got those right) and said in retrospect she should have changed courses when she was forced to buy the calf liver because of inability to obtain her desired cuts of meat. She has a great sense of humor and said she and her husband have been looking at each other periodically since she got home and saying out of the blue “f***ing liver” just to vent how that was her downfall. Evidently, while the pea cake and mushroom soup went on her updated menu last night, liver won’t be joining those dishes. 
One of the questions yesterday was about her favorite competitor and she said that was too hard, that they all liked & respected each other. She was especially warm in talking about the final group of competitors and “sous chefs” because she had spent so much time with them.
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Remember when Gabi and Buddha won the paired competition? Buddha lifted ga I and twirled him around. I do think he has emotions, but it was winning back to back was the big drawback. By the way, I don’t like the paired completions. Sometimes a really good chef goes down early.
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