If you’re like us, you have been watching Top Chef, avidly, waiting to see who would win.
We have one thing to say after last night’s finale. The wrong guy won.
Don’t get us wrong. Michael Voltaggio is talented, wildly creative, and sure to be a success. He also seemed like the kind of cocksure, swaggering chef that make people roll their eyes when they hear the title of chef. Barking at other contestants, unable to put aside his competitiveness to congratulate his own brother, and generally just kind of an ass, Michael Voltaggio made a lot of people unhappy when he won.
Mostly because we were all rooting for Kevin.
Kevin Gillespie, the man with the beard, the guy with the uncanny resemblance to Yukon Cornelius, and the sweetest chef on television. Kevin, we wanted you to win.
He makes soulful food. He doesn’t yell at anyone else. And mostly, he cooks some amazing pork. As Gail Simmons wrote in her blog about the show: “Kevin …with his deceptively simple Southern flavors and heavy (often genius) use of pork.” Yep. The man loves pork.
He has a pig tattooed on his arm, for goodness’ sake!
(That photograph above is not of Kevin, however. It’s actually a friend of Danny’s.)
In the final competition, Kevin cooked a pork belly dish that left the judges wondering if he knew the proper technique for cooking pork belly. As Kevin said in a subsequent interview:
TVGuide.com: The judges were pretty critical of your pork dish. Would you have changed anything in retrospect?
Kevin: No, I wouldn’t. I have a lot of feelings about that dish and get a little fired up about it. I could have served it with a piece of roasted pork. But that would have detracted from what I was trying to do, which was to give you multiple textures of something in a single package. For me, the flaw of that dish was not in execution. It came from the fact that I chose to deal with something in a way that was foreign to [the judges]. Let me tell you, there’s plenty of people who line up at [our restaurant] to eat that pork belly every single night. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that dish.
Kevin, we would happily line up at your restaurant to eat that pork belly. Maybe someday we will.
In the meantime, just know we think you should have won.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for stating the disappointment of the results of the Top Chef finale so well. I still cannot believe Kevin lost. Michael was firmly planted in third place in my mind mostly because of his boorish behavior throughout the season. Of course, I know we weren’t there to taste that last meal in competition, but certainly Kevin’s success throughout the season should have accounted for something! If it was “better television” to have the two brothers standing for the last announcement, then that is even more disappointing.
I’m still upset about. I called him the winner on the very first episode. I think the producers stepped in on this one in an attempt to raise some publicity for an already-popular show!
Kevin should have won. Too bad his divorce messed up his concentration. I think the Top Chef contestants should have to cook a GF meal as part of their ordeal to be a Top Chef. I suggested it at the Bravo website but have yet to hear back. I think it would be interesting to see how they handle it.