‘Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen’ review: Did Kristen Kish defeat Lizzie Binder?

Is Kristen Kish’s “Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen” dominance going to take her back into the competition soon? Before this week’s edition started, she only had two more culinary battles to conquer before finding her way back into the finale … and now, she is officially halfway there.

Kristen’s competition this time around was none other than Lizzie Binder, who was eliminated after breaking the cardinal rule of not tasting a sandwich with all of the components included on it. Both of the chefs were forced to create a fish dish for Tom Colicchio, but the twist here was that it had to actually be cooked over an open flame. Lizzie tried to redeem herself by making salmon again, whereas Kristen went with a fish in cod that is also popular in the region.

We’re fairly curious as to the filming schedule for this, given that the contestants on this web series were in Alaska along with the rest of the remaining chefs this week and given the real-time nature of the “Save a Chef” component (which Wikipedia is , there can’t be much time between the filming of the final “Last Chance Kitchen” and the actual finale for the show. We’ve said this before, but personally we’re not much of a fan of sending the winner here strictly into the finale, mostly because this means that the winner for the entire season could theoretically be someone whose major most-recent arc was only available to people who watched the videos online. The way it was handled last season with Beverly was perfect, since she had her second chance but still needed to prove it in the competition for a couple of weeks.

Are you glad that Kirsten now only has one more battle to go until she can potentially return to the competition, and who are you hoping to see win? If you want to see where we ranked the chefs going into this past episode, you can do so here; meanwhile, we’ll have our new rankings up over the weekend.

Photo: Bravo