‘Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen’ episode 4: Silvia Barban, Sam Talbot square off

Sometimes, there are decisions on “Top Chef” that are fairly controversial. However, at the same time there are also others that will get you watch the show and almost immediately think “yeah, it’s easy to understand how that happened.”

For the end of tonight’s episode, it was more of the latter as we saw the results of the barbecue disaster for the green team unfold. All of these people were talented, but nothing quite worked. Silvia Barban eventually was sent home after her potato salad was hardly what Americans think of as potato salad, and it really didn’t quite work.

The challenge – Often, “Last Chance Kitchen” is thought of as an opportunity for chefs to get some sort of redemption on the mistake that they made; here, the web show did something a little bit inspired and themed the challenge for Silvia vs. Sam Talbot on luck — something that she did not have because of getting eliminated right after her birthday. The Birthday Curse is apparently a thing, and she was just the latest chef to succumb to it.

Here, Tom Colicchio had her and Sam cook a dish using a number of “lucky” ingredients, whether they be pork, pomegranates, eggs, kale, sage, or other items. The two dishes ended up being rather similar, so our favorite part of this revolved more around seeing the birthday cake that was randomly brought in almost as a temptation. (Sam’s diabetic, so he didn’t seem anywhere near as interested.)

The results – The curse is broken! Silvia moves on, and Sam — who was eliminated here — saw his winning streak end. You do have to admire that classy way that he went out, and we imagine that doing the show this time is far and away a different experience than all the way back in season 2, a particularly dramatic season with some ugly moments during it. This time, he got to be a part of something far more positive.

As for Silvia, can we really say that she broke the birthday curse when really this was filmed after her birthday? That’s something we have a hard time figuring out at the moment. Episode Grade: B+.

For more “Top Chef” news, including a review of tonight’s episode and a preview of what’s next, be sure to head over to this link! (Photo: Bravo.)