Top Chef: Colorado episode 13 review: Who advanced to the finale?

For Top Chef: Colorado episode 13, it’s pretty darn fair to say that the expectations were higher than they have ever been. Only two chefs were going to make it to the finale and over the course of the hour, we saw pretty much every chef was challenged.

For starters, you had the quickfire that required all of the chefs to catch their own fish and then cook it. Joseph Flamm won that, and his reward was an opportunity to pick an eliminated chef to partner with for the elimination challenge — designing the perfect dish for the iconic Food & Wine festival in Aspen. Not only did the chefs have to serve 200 guests, but they also had to be vegetarian. That’s tough, especially since they were cooking outdoors using non-traditional ingredients.

If we had to choose between the three dishes as to which one we enjoyed the most visually, it was Adrienne Cheatham and her corn pudding. We have no idea how in the world she really pulled this off cooking something like this outdoors, but she did. All three dishes were well-received by the judges and what makes that exciting is mostly that you had a whole lot of mystery as to who would stay and who would go.

Admittedly, there was a part of us that thought Joe vs. Joe would make for an interesting finale in concept alone — yet, Adrienne has been killing it on the show as of late, really ever since the chefs departed from Denver and went to some other places.

The final result

The judges deliberated on this one for a while and understandably so. While Joe Flamm’s dish was the simplest of the three, taste-wise he may have had the best feedback on everything but the size of the zucchini. Meanwhile, at the same time Joe Sasto and Adrienne brought out complex dishes — they deserve an A for effort, but simultaneously they didn’t capture some of the magic that came with cooking in the location. There wasn’t a lot of char on their food.

In the end, the person who was eliminated tonight was … Joe Sasto. He made it so close to the finale but the dish tonight just didn’t come together.

On a separate note, Padma totally freaked us out by announcing Joe Flamm’s name, which made us think that he was going to be eliminated first.

What do you think about Top Chef: Colorado episode 13, and did the right person go home? Share right now in the comments!

Meanwhile, you can also like CarterMatt on Facebook if you want some other insight on the Bravo series. (Photo: Bravo.)