"Top Chef All-Stars" comes to a rousing close

In this "Any Regrets?" clip from Bravo's Watch What's Happening Now live post-Top Chef-finale show, featuring finalists Richard Blais and Mike Isabella, runner-up Mike talks to host Andy Cohen exceptionally graciously about winner Richard's contribution to the show.

by Ken

Over the long season Top Chef All-Stars (about which I wrote way back when, "To my surprise, I'm really psyched for tonight's 'Top Chef All-Stars premiere'") predictably had its ups and downs but came on strong down the stretch. The fates willed the show a pair of really strong and viewer-friendly competitors for the finale, and this season's format, another "Restaurant Wars" outing in which the finalists had a chance to show off not just menu-planning and cooking skills but their ability to manage sous chefs and kitchen staff and service. (This was all the more impressive in that the chefs didn't get to choose their sous chefs directly. Rather they chose their favorites from anonymously plated amuse-bouches prepared by all 15 previously eliminated Top Chefs All-Stars contestants. Luckily all around, Mike didn't have to find out how he would have worked with Marcel, with whom he had that angry head-to-head in the season's actual "Restaurant Wars" challenge.)

Both Richard and Mike talked a lot in their on-camera interviews in the later episode with striking insight, notably the ways in which their growth as chefs and people -- not just since their original seasons but over the course of All-Stars. Both were clearly more poised in the kitchen, both as cooks and as competitors. Richard hasn't yet gotten control of the self-hypercritical habit, but he's less apt to let it disable him, and he definitely has learned to subordinate the compulsion to "innovate" to an understanding that the proof is in the eating; he's got to satisfy his customers. And Mike, who in his original season tended to be overshadowed by the amazing Voltaggio brothers, really has broadened his culinary skills, and also seemed by the finale to have gained a better handle on the strength of his deep family roots in Italian cucina.

An example each of the kind of smarts they demonstrated in the home stretch:

MIKE DOES HIS HOMEWORK

With the two rounds of finals taking place in the Bahamas, Mike had the sense to prepare himself for whatever might be thrown at the contestants in the form of local cuisine and ingredients, notably conch. Now this has always been a feature of the Top Chef finals road trips, and it's hard to understand why anyone who makes it into the location rounds wouldn't do this kind of preparation. But when the elimination challenge there called for using local ingredients with conch as a mandatory one, Mike was all set to go, and produced what the judges agreed was the best conch dish. (Richard, meanwhile, was Richard, and used the conch to produce a version of a staple of his Long Island upbringing: linguine with clam sauce -- with conch for the clams and "pasta" made of sweet potato!)


Mike's "exit interview"

RICHARD LISTENS AND ADAPTS

In the final head-to-head competition Richard -- who had battled back from a late-season slump in which his food just seemed to sink into misfiring technique rather than trying above all to be good -- did something that impressed me even more. The format had two sets of judges dining in shifts in the two restaurants, which made it especially interesting in that the chefs, apart from serving their other "customers," had two judges' services. During the first he had sous chef Spike "spying" on the judges, reporting back comments, and it was clear that the most problematic element in his meal was the foie gras ice cream (yes, foie gras ice cream), whose texture was apparently clumpy and unpleasant. For the second chefs' service, Richard actually remade the ice cream, and clearly produced a much more satisfactory result. The judges were clearly aware that they had been served something noticeably different in their dessert courses, and were interested in finding out what had caused it. None of them said this, but I thought this was simply brilliant on Richard's part, a testament to his ability to solicit and process feedback and then actually adjust to it.


Richard's "exit interview"

IF THE VERDICT HAD GONE THE OTHER WAY --

I don't think there would have been much ground for complaint, but the survey taken by Watch What Happens Now found that 86 percent of respondents agreed with the judges' decision. Clearly both guys came out winners. But Richard was just the winningier winner.


POSTSCRIPT: CHOPPED ALL-STARS FINALE TONIGHT

The "all-stars" format not only ramps up the competition level but shifts the focus to the food, since the less experienced regular contestants on Food Networks' Chopped competition show just aren't equipped to compete at this level under those severe limitations. With the all-stars, the competition becomes about different strengths rather than a catalogue of blunders.

#