Top Chef season 21 finale: And the winner is…

Nearly twenty years into Top Chef, you can almost craft a bingo board of what to expect from a season’s grand finale. Someone will ill-advisedly make a risotto. Tom Colicchio will parade around in a medley of fanciful hats. A key ingredient will be out-of-stock at Whole Foods, requiring a last-minute menu pivot. Our host—currently, that’s competition alum Kristen Kish, who will no doubt be wearing a spectacularly tailored suit—will tell everyone that, though only one chef-testants will go home with the $250,000 furnished by Saratoga Spring Water, “you’re all winners.”

It’s a formula as easy to follow as a kitchen recipe, with ingredients that certainly pop up throughout this final edition of Top Chef: Wisconsin. And though the season’s conclusion didn’t offer up many surprises, it still proved to be a satisfying spread.

We’ve come a long way, Top Chef-ers, from the cheese-loving midland of America to a cruise ship bound for Aruba. For their final cook of the competition, our top three—Savannah, Danny, and Milwaukee Dan—had the usual simple but daunting prompt: create the best damn progressive, four-course meal of their lives, whilst aboard a Holland America Line ship. For their last service, the trio would present their dishes to a lineup of culinary greats, including Top Chef Canada judge David Zilber, James Beard winner Justin Pichetrungsi, Michelin-starred chef Carrie Nahabedian, and one surprise, megawatt food star who would join Kristen, Tom, and Gail Simmons at the judges’ table. (“We’re saving the best for last, but we’re not going to tell you who that is,” Tom teased.)

Going into the last challenge, our chefs were fittingly reflective. Milwaukee Dan reminisced about how he had tried out for the show a whopping 11 times, but it took being diagnosed with Kennedy disease to give him a real sense of urgency to compete. And Savannah mused about her own surprising trajectory: “Walking in on day one, I didn’t think I would make it to the finale. I was scared…I think I surprised myself.” And, frankly, at the season’s start—which was dominated by the likes of Rasika and Michelle—this viewer wouldn’t have put money on Savannah making the top three, either.

Speaking of this season’s dearly departed chefs, the trio wouldn’t be cooking alone—each one would get to choose from one of their former castmates to assist in the final comp. After drawing knives, Dan chose Amanda, Savannah partnered with Michelle, and Danny and Manny made a satisfyingly rhymed pair. They’d have access to markets in Aruba as well as onboard ingredients from the ship, and seven-plus hours across two days to prep and cook. On paper, all doable—but this is Top Chef. And we’ve got stuff to check off on that bingo board.

Milwaukee Dan wanted his sardines cleaned but got derailed when the lady at the fish counter accidentally cooked them instead. (He was forced to switch gears to tiny snappers that are “gonna be a pain in the ass to clean.”) Manny used up all of the cantaloupes for juice instead of melon balls like Danny wanted. And Michelle was worried that Savannah was attempting fresh pasta for the final challenge, a concern shared by Dan. (“You’re cooking pasta for Tom and Kristen? Kristen worked at one of the best pasta restaurants in the country. It’s a bold move!”) Throw in a surprise kitchen drop-in from this week’s guest judge—the one, the only Emeril Lagasse—and, as Danny proclaimed mid-cook, “the intensity is high.”

Compared to past seasons—hell, compared to past episodes—the four courses whipped up respectively by our final three weren’t the most heart-stopping, high-minded plates we’ve seen come out of a Top Chef kitchen. Tom didn’t love the same-sameness of textures in Milwaukee Dan’s opening tuna tartare with ruby red grapefruit, though he was a fan of the smoky dashi that dressed his grilled snapper with braised pumpkin. Several of Danny’s spiny lobsters, which he served with salsa macha and chaaza sauce to echo some of his earliest food memories, were undercooked, but the judges did praise the “clever” candied seaweed that later topped his piragua con leche.

And several of Savannah’s geographically-inspired courses were plagued with technical issues, from the brittleness of her pasta dough (Michelle was right!) to her miscalculated mofongo plantains. (The only thing funnier than Tom dad-joking “It’s a mofongo-no!” is another diner immediately chastising him with an exasperated “Oh, Tom.”)

At the final judges’ table of the season, it seemed clear that Savannah’s multiple mistakes pretty much immediately took her out of the running, which left a Battle of the Dans. And though this writer’s gut said that Dan’s heartfelt edit meant he would be taking the win home to Milwaukee, it was actually Danny whom Kristen announced as this season’s winner of Top Chef. Along with being the franchise’s first Puerto Rican and Muslim victor, Danny also distinguished himself as the chef who’s won the most money—a cool $303,000—in the show’s history. “This is just the beginning,” he declared to Tom. “This is day one.”

Stray observations

• Of course, our last shot of Manny would see him champagne’d up and being overly bromantic. “You are a f***ing inspiration!” he cooed in Milwaukee Dan’s ear.
• We’ll always miss Padma, but we did really love Kristen Kish’s season debut as Top Chef host. It was very sweet seeing how giddy and emotional Kish was over getting to announce this season’s winner, a sentimentality no doubt compounded by the fact that Emeril—who judged both her first and last challenge as a Top Chef competitor—was sitting right alongside her on the judges’ table.
• So, Top Chef fans, what did you think? Did you have money down on Danny’s win? And did you expect these chefs to be our final three or were you rooting for early-season standouts like Rasika, Kévin and Michelle? And where do you think Kristen, Tom, Gail, and the rest of the crew will pop up next season?