Top Chef Finale (Spoilers)

Good show. Still too much kitchen drama and not enough food and cooking, but still one of the better episodes.

I thought Harold definitely deserved the win (as did all four assistants and 97% of the viewers). He has a great career ahead of him. Tiffani has some talent, but she needs to do a lot of growing. She was totalling busted in lying about her role with Dave’s dessert.

Based on the way they were presenting the critiques, I thought they might be pulling the old “make the winner look bad so you can have the surprise outcome” schtick. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

I disagree totally. I’ve said it over and over that Harold is a competent chef. But he’s a Sous Chef; not an Executive Chef. His reluctance to do anything original, take any chances or even challenge himself shows he doesn’t have the creativity to create a menu. Everything on his menu was something he learned from someone else. Even the beef duo everyone raved about was, IIRC, originally one of Miguel’s dishes in one of the early episodes. An Executive Chef must have a vision. Harold doesn’t have that. He barely has a presence.

Tiffani performed well, even with a hung-over team who were clearly sandbagging. Dave stepped up with the dessert; but otherwise he and Stephen were not team players. If they think everyone on a kitchen line loves the Executive Chef, then they are naive beyond words. I’ll bet you could pick any chef off the line at one of Tom’s restaurants and you’d have a good chance of picking someone who doesn’t like him on a personal level. I think she got hosed. The four sous chefs were petty and mean and I dislike them all now.

It sounded like the judges thought some of Tiffani’s dishes downright sucked. They might have thought Harold played it safe but they also said he was consistently good while Tiffani was hit and miss. The dish they liked the most from Tiffani was Dave’s dessert, which she totally lied and tried to take credit for. She was even snotty to Dave about it when he was making it for her. He said something like, “I’m glad I could make this for you,” and she said, im this really condescending way, “I’m glad you could help.” Like he was just assisting her with one of her own dishes instead of GIVING her a showstopper dish of his own and making it top to bottom.

Tiffani also said something else that rubbed me the wrong way. Agter she found out that her own sous chefs though harold she win, she told him “my back just ran into your knife,” like Harold had betrayed her in some way because her assistants liked him better. She grates.

The Tiffinator got what she deserved. Why on earth does she think she can lie while being taped and get by with it. Unbelievable. While she has talent, I think her actions will restrict her career opportunities due to the negative fallout she brought on herself.

I agree. I thought it was unfair that Tiffani got challenged on the dessert while Harold wasn’t pressed about HIS best dish coming from another chef.

I will say, though, that part of being the Top Chef is leadership, and Tiffani didn’t do a good job of that. She didn’t necessarily have to be likeable, but she did have to find some way to get the best out of her team – and she didn’t.

I’m not so sure that Tiffani lied. We saw just a few minutes of the cooking process. Who are we to say that Dave and Tiffani didn’t talk about the desserts as she said. . . but that bit just got left on the editing room floor (figuratively speaking)? I think Tiffani had an abrasive personality, yes. . . but I think she was edited to be the show’s Bitch! (So we could have Dave’s famous line and the T-Shirts that followed. Not that it was planned.) Stephen was the male equivalent. Miguel was the clown. Dave was the tragic, caring loser. Lee Anne was the female second lead. . . talented but essentially personality-less. Candice (I think that was her name) was the ingenue. And the rest of the cast were bit players. Harold won because he was the handsome leading man of reasonable talent. . . whom everybody liked.

(I tried to get on to SDMB to write this last night, but the board was choked. Prolly all them IDOL or LOST folks rambling on. . . . Me, I don’t watch either one!)

I caught that, too. And after Harold apologized, she said something to the effect of “well, at least we both know it”. She was totally accusing Harold of pitting all the sous chefs against her.

I agree about Tiffany being called on the dessert while Harold got a pass on the beef. She is a blatant liar, she could have just told them that Dave did the dessert, big deal.

I thought it hilarious when Bracco, who had supplied the wine, suggested that Tiffany needed a sommelier. Priceless.

While Tiffany’s sous chefs might have been sandbagging, she also seemed to want to micro-manage. This “trying to do it all herself” probably hurt the quality of some of her dishes, maybe more than hungover, sandbagging sous chefs.

And love her or hate her, Katie was sure hot at the final judges table.

I seriously don’t understand the love for Harold. He was umkempt and constantly complained about the challenges. Beef is the only meat he cooked well. Every other bird or animal he cooked was over done. He whined nearly every time that it wasn’t the kind of cooking he did. His personality was so blah that Tom recommended he stay in the kitchen and not go out to present his dishes like Tiffani did.

And this is the role of the Chef de Cuisine. You are the face of a restaurant, the personality behind it, the reason people go there. Tom basically told him “you are a Sous-chef, stay in the kitchen.” You will never see a restaurant with Harold’s name as the Chef de Cuisine or Executive Chef.

I’m not sure that we totally disagree. I think that Harold will be successful, but I don’t expect him to be a star chef. I could see him getting a nice little restaurant going that makes it, but he won’t be a Wolfgang Puck. Tiffani, on the other hand, has more potential in the long run; she’s just not there yet. Just in terms of this competition, I think Harold did better overall (in the last challenge and throughout the show) than Tiffani.

I heard that, too, and I couldn’t figure out if she just got the wording wrong while trying to be clever or if she really meant Harold stabbed her in the back. Of course, Harold did emphasize that having people want to work with you is an important aspect of the job, so maybe she really believed Harold sabotaged her.

In terms of Tiffani being challenged about the dessert and Harold not being challenged about the beef dish, Tom, Katie, and Gail already knew that was Miguel’s dish, but they didn’t know about the dessert. I think if Tiffani just said it was Dave’s dish and let it go at that, she wouldn’t have caught so much flak.

When it’s all said and done, unless they give the show a major retool, it’s not worth another season. Project Runway is much much better.

Retool and redouchebag?

It has been renewed, so perhaps they’ll figure out many of the many problems - most especially the editing.
The editing for this show has sucked, sucked worse than Tom, sucked worse than Katie’s on air non-personality, sucked worse than Stephen’s lectures or the sandy kale or the absolutely stupid wedding challenge. They don’t seem to have figured out what to show, what not to show, and how to make an episode make sense. They go for the good quote or the good laugh, and leave out a comprehensive story. Biggest example was last week - based on the blogs, Tiffani did a pretty good job (of course, I hate Tom, so I doubt he’s telling the truth), but the edit didn’t show a single compliment to her food and a bunch of complaints. The end of the episode didn’t make sense, given the parts we were shown on screen. But it happened more than once, and it didn’t feel like intentional misdirection - just bad decision making. (She might have talked to Dave about the desserts - but all we saw was him trying to tell her about what he was going to serve and her shutting him up entirely. I say she lied and got caught lying - especially since she’s been caught lying before. She did realize she was being filmed, right?)

But of the two, Harold did a better job than Tiffani - the assignment was to pair the wines with the food. She already knew what she was going to serve, and didn’t even taste the wines until the next day. Hence the “she needs a sommelier” comment. (BTW, do chefs really drink that much on the job? Between Harold, Stephen, and Dave - wow. Just wow.) I don’t like Harold - he also has had jerkish moments - but if nothing else, he can run a team and she can’t.

But Project Runway is done much, much, much better.

My favorite Tiffani line was about the poker players. When told they didn’t like her food, she said, [Well maybe when they become better poker players, they’ll get some taste] Not knowing that one of the best (and most obnoxious) poker players was one of the judges. (In fact the other guy was also a very good poker player) I’m glad Harold won, and agree that if Tiffani hadn’t tried to take credit for Dave’s dessert, she would’ve been better off.

I also agree that any real chef is hated by their sous chefs, but they don’t have to rely on their sous chefs to give them glowing remarks when you are trying to get something. She is not yet a Top Chef, so until she becomes one, she should tone it down.

Lastly, Tiffani wanted to travel and find herself with her money. Harold was ready to open a restaurant (and in fact already had it started before going to Vegas). Which one is going to be more deserving?

I thought she said she wanted to travel to learn more about food and cooking. She also admitted she was not professionally trained in the final show.

And since when is “deserving” a criterion of becoming Top Chef? I thought it was about cooking, menu planning and team leadership.

And I totally agree that the show needs a major overhaul before it ever comes back on the air.

I didn’t catch the thing about not being professionally trained. Can you elaborate?

And do you really think it needs a “major” overhaul or just better execution? I liked the format of having a quickfire challenge and an elimination challenge. I didn’t mind the stunt-y challenges too much, although I wish they’d toned them down as the season went on. The stupid wedding challenge that late in the process was ridiculous. I’d like to see more shows like the finale – all about the food and the chefs’ decisions.

Tiffany made the comment about not being professionally trained in reference to her background compared to the others. Of course seeing how it came from Tiffani’s mouth, I have to factor how believable and if it’s just another one of her lies. IMHO - She managed to establish that much of a credibility problem for herself.

In a past life, I was a sous chef. I didn’t “hate” the chef but I didn’t like him either.
If Tiffany was a man she would not have had such a problem leading in the kitchen. I thought her menu was more inspired than Harold. He has no vision, and plays it safe.

As for next season, I think they should use the chef-judge as a mentor. Like they have in Project Runway. And for pity sake get rid of Billy Joel’s wife, she may be hot but she is BORING!

I totally agree with this description of a “show overhaul.” Thanks! Oh. . . and the chef/judge shouldn’t judge! If he’s mentoring, he’s got knowledge of what went on in the kitchen that could skew his vote. He should be only a mentor. Then get some other expert to be a judge.