How the final chefs stack up on Top Chef: World All-Stars
Who's most likely to reign supreme and who will have to pack their knives and go? We rank the remaining competitors.
TV Features Top Chef
A double elimination looms over the 11th episode of Top Chef: World All-Stars (out May 18), which will simultaneously crank up the burners on the culinary reality competition and reduce our pot of players—previous champions and finalists pulled both from the long-running American franchise as well as its numerous international spinoffs—down to a final four. (With 10 competitors sent packing already, don’t the days of Potato Girl and Luciana’s statement earrings feel like eons ago?)
The beloved foodie series has gone all out for its landmark 20th season, the first entirely filmed abroad (in London for the bulk and Paris for the big finale), and that sense of pomp can be felt both in the quality of the cooking and in the criticism of the judging. Given the winning talents of the Top Chef kitchen this season, the judges panel (our trusty trio of American chef Tom Colicchio, gourmand glamazon Padma Lakshmi, and food writer Gail Simmons) has admitted to resorting to micro-level nitpicking—bemoaning the chew of too-thick pasta, the crunch of a kernel of overcooked rice, the ick of a prawn’s digestive tract—in their efforts to single out a losing dish.
So with the competition at boiling point, who will win the big prize ($250,000 furnished by the Saratoga Brand, a feature in Food and Wine magazine, and an appearance at the annual Food and Wine Classic in Aspen) and walk away with the ultimate title of Top Chef: World All-Star? Here are our power rankings, from least likely to most likely to come out on top.
10 Comments
Interesting! I thought Buddha was getting the winner’s edit, but I see your points about Ali. I love Ali and I’d love to see him win.
Love Ali too, but I agree, I feel Buddha is taking it home. His food does look consistently top tier.Victoire was my favourite personality of this season, sad she went out on bland dishes.
I agree about Victoire. She was delightful, but her food never looked quite as good as others.
Buddha was the favorite to me when it all started and still is despite nerves getting to him last episode. But Amar shouldn’t be overlooked. I’d say he’s a dark horse, but he just swept the last episode cooking Indian food, which he’d never made before, for Padma.
Tom is obviously a very good tweezers-and-liquid-nitrogen chef like Buddha, but my guy Buddha has a much better sense of editing to make sure he can get his shit done (and done well) in the allotted time.
a prawn’s digestive tract being left in a completed dish is not “micro-level nitpicking” – it can leave behind toxins, trigger an allergy, or even kill you. but beyond that, it also ruins the texture of a dish, as it is quite grainy and unpleasant. not deveining prawns before serving these judges is gross at best and dangerous at worst.
agree X1000! I can’t believe that error happened.
Charbel is still in the mix!
Great to know! Didn’t get to watch LCK but was so sad to see him leave. I hope he comes back, he’s such a superstar and I wanted to see more.
I don’t like Tom but villain edit is correct. I don’t like him at this point and I feel manipulated by the editors. A little. You can be all funny and witty in interviews, but this is after all, Top Chef. His cooking is what matters.I really like Ali, and he won my heart by just going for it with vegetarian dishes in a few of the elimination challenges. But in the end I really hope Buddha takes it home.