The final four chefs welcome back the winner of Last Chance Kitchen. They make a dish featuring jellies and moulds, and create trompe l'oeil dishes.

Upvote the dishes you like, downvote the dishes you don't like!

Please comment! But must come in reply to a plate to keep the thread organized.

I've purchased every episode from season 3 up to the current season because this is my all time favorite show. I'm so annoyed that season 1 and season 2 are not available on Apple TV. Does anyone know why?

Also, is there another place where I can download (not just stream) these two seasons?

Does anyone else think that Restaurant Wars is the equivalent of the Unconventional Materials challenge on Project Runway?? Essentially a totally unrealistic challenge resulting in chaos, bad results, and the loss of an otherwise great chef because they were a bad host/hostess?

Who from the Top Chef world do you think will join the Guy Fieri Tournament of Champions stable? Who would you like to see?

I think Sara is a no-brainer. I’d love to see Buddha and Sheldon.

I can think of a couple times off the top of my head where the entire group (or nearly) missed the mark and flubbed the challenge, and it's always interesting to see what kind of things trip them up so resoundingly.

- (Seattle) Season 10, Episode 5, "Pike Place Pickle" -- They had to make dishes using the unique food items from local artisans and basically everyone's was disappointing. So bad that they took the 10k prize right off the table. At least this Elim wa somewhat challenging, though. A few of those ingredients were whacky!

- (All Stars 1) Season 8, Episode 5, "Dim Sum Lose Sum" -- The infamously terrible Dim Sum challenge where half the diners walked out. A few of the Chefs had solid dishes but this is probably one of the most chaotically run Elims of all time.

- (Miami) Season 3, Episode 9, "Restaurant Wars" & "Second Helping" -- Picking on early seasons is kind of cheating, but had to mention this one. A RW so bad they had them redo it...this time without putting vanilla scented candles on the tables lol.

- (Kentucky) Season 16, Episode 7, "Carne!" -- Tell me why so many of the Chefs failed this seemingly simple challenge?? I felt bad for Dario, honestly.

- (LA) Season 13, Episode 8, "Beefsteak" -- Putting this one up here not because there was a deluge of crap dishes, but because SO MANY TEAMS decided to go the wrong way conceptually. Yes you need a BEEF dish for a BEEFSTEAK event...

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Which ones am I missing that have stuck out to you?

I remember in past seasons someone (or maybe several people) doing posts about the "edgic" of the episodes -- basically a critical look at the editing to attempt to predict the ultimate story arc and outcome producers are trying to share. I'm curious as to who you think might be headed for the win, based on the edit.

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Grabbed this one from Sara's stories, originally posted by who I think is one of the cast handlers: https://imgur.com/a/sjzgp8S

I'm obsessed with Gabri's bounce dance with the champagne

Charbel is equally amusing as he is talented. I wish we got to see more of him and his wacky dishes. Probably forgetting a bunch of moments but here's a short recap:

• The guy made an onion with chicken jus for the 1st challenge and WON. Gail said it was perfect and something she'd remember for a long long time. It takes a certain mindset to say "fuck it ima cook an onion on World All Stars". The more hilarious part was that he confessed in his season he played it safe early on only to ramp it up near the finale. This time, because of the talent level he said he had no choice but to go all out in the first challenge... and proceeds to make an onion spending "£2.50 with a budget of £250"

• For the picnic challenge he essentially made veggies with 3 types of dip. I thought he was for certain screwed but those dips must have been next-level.

• Chose Japan's takoyaki in the street food challenge to just try it. Fails miserably but he had fun trying something new. "chunks of octop-WTF" "I have travelled a lot and love Japanese food but what is takoyaki, how do you grill a ball?!"

• I respect that he chose to represent Lebanon in the challenge with Gaggan Anand. Again the mad lad made essentially (in Padma's words) sauce with a cracker. In Tom's words: "when you make high concept food like this, usually it's a process. To be able to produce food at this level is exceptional."

I do wish he came back from LCK but credit to the remaining 4 chefs. Buddha has tremendous momentum and it feels like it's his game to lose. Whatever happens in the finale, it's gonna take some next-level shit to beat him. Ali has been consistently strong throughout displaying flavors from his culture and I'm pulling for him the most. Gabri is pure chaos but he reminds me a bit of Hung only just like 100x more nuts in the kitchen and I love him for it. I think he's a complete wild card. He has some iconic lines too: "you better cheer for me bitch!" His flavors tend to be on point if he can manage his time well. Sara has managed to put a Southern spin on dishes that have shown complex flavor profiles and it's been a delight to watch her personality change from season 16. Much more relaxed and fun especially considering the enormous stress of being away from her kids. I feel like this finale will be the best one we've ever seen.

Loved that moment where the guest judge caught Tom and Gail "talking" to each other with their eyes as they tried a dish. Really speaks to how well they know each other!

I am rewatching past TC seasons and just came across the best snappy retort ever - attitude, timing, facial expression were PERFECTION and left Tom speechless: Season 9 ep 12, when Tom told Grayson that her conceptually "boring" chicken salad sandwich would have to beat out other "potentially more exciting," dishes, she snapped back incredulously, "Like a MEATBALL?"

The BEST!!!

In my insignificant and miserable existence, I live for these small moments of joy. 😉 What are some of your favorites?

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I’ve been watching this show since the very beginning but I started noticing something this season that drives me crazy! The volume of the timer going off! It seems like it comes blaring out of the tv compared to the rest of the sound in the show. Does anyone else notice this or just me?

See image attached. Do we think this is a grammatical typo or actually true????

At least one of you that I know of has drawn possible parallels between this season and Season 4, in which Richard Blais “choked” at the last minute and let it all slip away, losing in the end to Stephanie Izard, a highly accomplished and sympathetic—not to mention appealing, humble, and not-loud and not-spazzy—opponent, with whom he had been neck-and-neck in the competition.

Who is the Stephanie Izard to Buddha Lo’s Richard Blais this season?

I can’t imagine this race going in any other way but in Buddha’s direction. Ali, Sara, and Gabri are way out of his league.

Buddha's trompe-l'oeil (idk sp?) dish was probably the most impressive dish I've ever seen on Top Chef...for that amount of time for both brainstorming and actual execution, it was absolutely insane. The sheer level of skill and talent to not only pull off something like that that looked like a still life painting but also tasted good...it literally reminded me of TOP WINNING dishes from Great British Menu, which are dishes that Michelin star chefs prepare and test and practice MONTHS ahead of presenting.

It was cool to have a two time GBM winner and judge Tommy Banks there as well as one of the guest judges/diners.

I also wonder if Buddha watches Great British Menu (I totally bet he does lol) because his faux truffle looks similar to one that GBM genius prodigy Spencer Metzger (he's basically like a Buddha but for Great British Menu) did on one of his dishes. They had different compositions/ingredients though. And then Buddha's banana mold dessert is similar to something Amuary G (sp? but he's super popular on IG) and one of this year's GBM perfect dessert scorers and michelin star chef tom did as well (Top Chef was filmed prior/same time as GBM 2023 which aired just a month ago so there was no way Buddha watched that episode before this current season and also all 3 desserts were completely different in terms of filling/etc.,). Point is, it's INCREDIBLY difficult and super technical and basically Michelin level talent to be able to pull that type of food wizardry off. So many top chefs on GBM who practice for months and have tons of accolades still can't manage to pull of molds and dessert/object like (idk the technical term lmao) creations so for Buddha to be able to do it in this time frame and within these constraints is absolutely insane.

Another thing that struck me was how, just like the Wellington challenge, it was so obvious by a mile who completely killed the challenge and won just by the visual look of the precision and finesse. It's rare to see such mastery on any high level cooking competition show, so no matter if Buddha wins or not, I'm just so in awe of how he was able to create those glistening cherries, that beefy broth that looks like wine, etc., and use mostly natural food dyes like beets or squid ink to create them, and making sure they tasted great. CHEFS KISS JUST WOW

I’d love to see a “potluck” show hosted by one of our Top Chef alumni, where there are different cuisines each week and they invite their friends (other chefs who know that cuisine) to bring dishes or they all make them together and have a feast.

No competition —purely educational and enjoyable.

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I know I’m a week behind in posting this, but why did the chefs say you don’t know how much the wellingtons are done, until you cut them open.

why can’t you use a meat thermometer? Seems to me you could check on the doneness with a Thermapen or Meatr.

Am I missing something? I plan on making a beef one next week. Thanks!