“Top Chef: Portland” Episode 14 Recap: And the Winner Is [Redacted]!

It’s so hard to write a recap when you’re feeling all the feels. I know we’re biased and all, but I have to say that this season of Top Chef has been my favorite since Top Chef: Boston…right until they announced the winner. More on that further down.

The challenges have been exhilarating, seeing Oregon fly on her own wings across the screen has been so gratifying, and the contestants have been compelling and super talented.

But, nothing gold can last, and we have a new winner of Season 18—for better or worse—so let’s get to it.

Elimination Challenge: Thanks to last week’s sorta-surprise no-elimination decision, we’ve got three chefs vying for the $250,000, a spread in Food & Wine mag and an appearance at its annual Aspen event. Gabe “Master of Mole” Earales, Dawn “Global Comfort Food” Burrell, and Shota “True Technician of Japanese Cuisine” Nakajima meet Padma at Willamette Valley Vineyards to learn their final challenge.

The charge is simple: create the best four-course progressive meal of their lives.

Eliminated chefs Byron, Jamie and Maria return to help sous, and the chefs draw knives for top picks. Dawn grabs Jamie, Shota goes with Byron, and Gabe and Maria are reunited and it feels so good (“Vamos hermanas,” he says to her as they embrace and get moving.)

On the first day, they get six hours to prep and cook. On day two, it’s just three hours and then service. The chefs are also told “Oregon is your oyster,” meaning they can go anywhere to gather their ingredients. Gabe and Maria head to the Portland Mercado, Dawn and Jamie go back to the Side Yard Farm and Shota and Byron are at Uwajimaya in Beaverton. (All of these spots are more than an hour away from the Vineyard, located just north of Salem off I-5, but as we proved last week, distance and time is not a concept in Top Chef.)

After prepping for six hours, Dawn notes she’s leaving multiple breads she’s planning to use to bake the next day, which immediately has me worried, considering her track record of running out of time and failing to get everything on the plate.

As the weary chefs head back to their home, they’re greeted the All Star judges. Richard Blais! Gregory Gourdet! Nina Compton! Kwame Onwuachi! Melissa King! All the chefs!

The All Stars cook a fucking feast for their new reality TV fam, and Top Chef lays on the “Dawn is probably going to run out of time tomorrow” edit thick, showing Compton pulling her aside to advise her to back off of having too many elements.

Sure enough, back at the kitchens at Willamette Valley Vineyards, Dawn and Jamie are scrambling, and a few elements of the first course don’t make two plates.

Shota serves sashimi three ways, including a piece involving gold leaf (what is this, Top Chef: Vegas?!), and cured salmon inside a pickled daikon radish. It looks, as the hip Japanese kids say, yabai, and the judges love it. Dawn’s lamb tartare, a take on Ethiopian kitfo, is well-liked but missing components for some, and Padma notes she didn’t even need them. Gabe makes a fried cochinita pibil head cheese that gets a lukewarm reception, as some felt the breading was soggy.

Dawn is understandably gutted, but she rallies for the second course.

Shota makes sauteed water spinach and burdock root, with white miso burdock puree and deep-fried octopus karaage. It’s…fine, though some of the judges feel it was more like a veggie side dish. Dawn, inspired by famous New Orleans chef Leah Chase, makes a green gumbo with seafood and a fermented rice fritter. The gumbo and the fritter get high marks, but Tom in particular feels the seafood doesn’t jive.

Gabe adds pineapple kombucha to a scallop aguachile to mimic the effects of tepache, a fermented fruit alcohol popular in Mexico. It receives a rapturous response, and frankly, I want it, too. This is some finale-ass cooking, Gabe.

For the third course, Shota makes a beef tongue Japanese curry with braised turnips and fukujinzuke pickles. It’s an homage to his mother’s favorite dish, and while the judges praise its hominess, they clock crunchy rice. (The curse of Avishar returns!)

Dawn serves braised beef with black eyed peas and buttered turnips, and the panel loves her peas so much. Kwame calls it “flawless.” Gabe goes for a Oaxacan inspired short rib with chichilo negro mole, mushrooms and pickled persimmons. They all love the complex mole, but a debate rages about the mushrooms, which some felt were burnt.

For dessert, Gabe presents a candied delicata squash with cafe Mexicano ice cream. Dawn makes a yam bread pudding with butter pecan creme Anglaise and purple yam and apple compote, and Shota goes with a hoji tea cheesecake with cedar smoked gelato. These all get high marks, with Tom noting that this is the best course of the night.

In deliberation, it’s clear that Dawn’s failure in the first course rules her out as the winner, and the judges debate the finer points of Gabe and Shota’s meals. In the end, Gabe is named the winner, and he’s celebrated as the first Mexican winner of Top Chef.

This is a bitter (not sweet) victory. As we noted in our Episode 9 recap, Gabe was fired from his Austin, Texas, restaurant Comedor in December for unspecified misconduct. After the finale aired, Padma put this on her Twitter account:

I’m not sure a Top Chef victory can be rescinded, but if an investigation bears out the allegations as true, Gabe should not keep the title.

Episode MVP: I’m going to go with Dawn for a second week in a row. This time for bouncing back from yet another plating issue to serve up a great final three courses.

Biggest bummer: I was planning all along to say that the season being over is the biggest bummer, but with the allegations against Gabe, it’s really that he won.

Richard Blais hair watch: Goodbye, Richard Blais’ hair, for now. I thank you for one of your final appearances, which was a faux hawk of sorts while enjoying the private dinner with the finalists. You truly let your hair down.