‘Top Chef: Seattle’ review: Did Kristen Kish, Sheldon Simeon make finale?
The final three is typically the point on any season of “Top Chef” that you want to be completely blown away by what some of the chefs do, but when it comes to Wednesday night’s new episode of the show, we’re not quite sure that this happened. Instead, what we really saw Sheldon Simeon try and cook something completely out of his style, two chefs largely disregard dessert like it was an afterthought, and Brooke Williamson do her best impression of a headless chicken while trying to cook in Tom Colicchio’s kitchen.
At times, this competition really felt like watching controlled chaos, and yet it ended in the way in which we expected this season to go about six weeks into it: with a final face-off between Kristen Kish and Brooke Williamson. If this was any other cast, or if Kristen had been eliminated under different circumstances, we may feel differently about the winner of “Last Chance Kitchen” getting the opportunity to make it as far as she did. However, it’s very hard from this standpoint to question her as anything other than deserving. She fought her way back into the competition after really getting eliminated for something that was only partially her fault, and there are few other cooks this entire season who were so daring or so consistently strong.
As for seeing Sheldon, who is probably going to be voted the fan favorite for the season, go home, it’s a rather sad feeling. He was a super-likable dude who really just made the mistake of trying to be someone other than himself, when in reality what he probably should have done was create a main course that contained an element of his personality while still pushing the limits of what he can cook. Nobody goes to Emeril Lagasse’s restaurant and expects to have a traditional egg role. However, they could see some sort of Cajun twist on an egg roll that reminds us who Emeril is.
Do you think that the judges made the right decision in sending Sheldon home, and do you agree after seeing the food this week that this is really Brooke’s game to lose? If you want to see where we ranked the chefs leading into Wednesday’s episode, you can do so over at the link here.
Photo: Bravo