‘Top Chef Masters: Battle of the Sous Chefs’ finale review: What chef has a penalty?

Tomorrow night, “Top Chef Masters” is set to conclude with an epic showdown between Douglas Keane, Jennifer Jasinski, and Bryan Voltaggio. But before we come to that, we have one final edition of “Battle of the Sous Chefs” to get through. While the chefs are going to create a dessert to go along with their masters’ final meals, this was not one where the winner won any sort of advantage outside of an extra $10,000 to be given to their boss’ charity.

So with that, Paul Winberry, Jr. Graeme Ritchie, and Jorel Pierce (magnificent mustache included) all went to work at something that they know very little about as savory chefs. This is the sort of thing that all chefs dread, and it may be fair to say that none of them really did a particularly amazing job with it based on the comments. What this really came down to was who made the fewest mistakes, and also who had the best conceptualization of the first day working with their master.

Ultimately, it was pretty clear who the winner was just based on the idea alone: Graeme, who had an extremely cool-looking dessert that was entirely white, and decorated with flavor. While part of it didn’t quite soften up as he wanted, it was still enough to add to Bryan’s total and to keep their current late-in-the-game winning streak alive.

Meanwhile, the biggest impact that this challenge is going to have on the finale is with Paul, who placed last and will not be able to help Doug at all on the first day of the final task. Doug’s a good enough chef to get through it, but this is going to give the likable guy even more of a challenge. A few weeks ago, we really didn’t think that Bryan had done enough this season to win; however, he’s now going into the finale with momentum, and that goes a long way.

Want to read more “Top Chef Masters” news? Then just be sure to visit the link here.

Photo: Bravo