The Top Chef Finale Offered a Few Surprises

The Top Chef finale on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 held some not so pleasant surprises. Most of the people that I still know in the cooking industry thought that either Casey or Dale had a lock on the title and the $100,000 award.

I have to admit that I thought the same thing. She had quickly outdistanced her other two opponents for the last several weeks. But, alas, she couldn't hold on to the lead and quickly lost ground in the finale.

The final three chefs - - Casey, Dale, and Hung - - were taken to the Aspen Mountain Lodge to cook "their best meal ever" for the finale. They were given a wide variety of ingredients to choose from and were also allowed to use any of the ingredients they had brought with them to Colorado.

When all three chefs honed in on some of the same ingredients, they had to make some last minute changes to their proposed menus. I think this is where Casey began to lose her grip ton the Cop Chef title.

For some reason no one could quite understand she choose to make pork belly. That is an incredibly difficult dish to master and requires perfect timing. A few minutes of cooking either way and a chef can end up with a major catastrophe on their hands.

Something new was added this year as a way to motivate the chefs. Famous chefs were brought in to serve as sous chefs for the contestants. They included Rocco DiSpirito, who worked with Hung; Todd English, who worked with Dale; and Michelle Bernstein, who was paired with Casey.

Considering that the contestants were not allowed to take advantage of their veteran helper's vast knowledge base, one has to wonder what the point was of having them there at all. If they were meant to shake things up by unhinging the contestants, that really didn't happen. Everyone appeared to work in perfect harmony. And I'll admit I loved watching the real Top Chefs take orders instead of giving them.

Although the chefs were originally told to cook a three course meal there was, of course, a last minute inevitable twist. A fourth course was thrown into the mix with only one-hour of time left for preparation. It was at this point that the former chef candidates were brought in to help.