Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen episode 9: Making bad produce good

Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen episode 9 absolutely carried with it an interesting vibe, and much of that had to do with the person who came into it.

When Claudette was last in this part of the competition, she was a likable underdog going up against contestants who were a part of the franchise before — this time around, it feels like she’s more of a villain. She also came across as though she didn’t think that she did anything wrong in Restaurant Wars even though she could have easily helped the other chefs with some of their mistakes. We rooted for the first time around, but this time around we found ourselves pulling more for Brother.

What was somewhat fun about this showdown was that Brother actually worked with Claudette on her team during Restaurant Wars; yet, he didn’t know if her team won or not. He found that out pretty quickly this week.

What made this particular showdown fun was pretty simple: It was all about food going bad. The chefs had to find a way to take some slowly-rotting ingredients and make them into something that actually tasted pretty good. Both Brother and Claudette have spent some time in their lives poor, and with that, they knew what do with some of these ingredients. They knew that you didn’t need good ingredients in order to do good things.

Related – Did you read our review from tonight’s new Top Chef episode?

Tom Colicchio’s decision

We didn’t have a good read going into this as to who was going to win but both parties came up with some interesting dishes. It also was a pretty friendly competition — Claudette and Brother seemed to like each other but were focused on the prize at the end.

Tom in the end felt like Brother managed to do more with all of the ingredients on the table, and that’s why he ended up making it through to the next round. We’ll give Claudette a little bit of credit here — after giving her grief for how she left the show and didn’t even acknowledge the other chefs, she took ownership of her food here and departed with a smile on her face.

Do you think that the right person went home on Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen this week? Be sure to share in the comments!

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