Hosea Rosenberg has won Top Chef New York, beating arrogant Stefan and goofy Carla for the Season 5 title and $100,000.
The finale, filmed in New Orleans, capped a long, formulaic, predictable season. The show has become like an old school friend who comes to visit, is invited back and returns too soon and stays too long. I seldom watched this season. I have Top Chef burnout, with this season following so closely behind S4 in Chicago.
Perhaps with Top Chef Masters scheduled for autumn, it might be at least a year before Top Chef is back in our living rooms. And perhaps by then the producers will have figured out ways to freshen the show and will have realized that finalists telling us it’s do or die time is not riveting entertainment.
So congratulations, Hosea. Well done. (I’d have given Stefan the alligator too.)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What I thought was interesting was that many of the better chefs seemed to me booted for the wrong reasons. For example, I thought that Hosea’s girlfriend, ol’ what’s her face, was kept on too long simply to play out their romantic gestures, a production decision, not a judging one. Isn’t there a 2-second blip near the end of the episodes about the Producers also having s say in the judges decisions?
Karla may not have deserved to win the title, but I came to like her a great deal. Quirky but kind hearted, I never saw her do the usual Top Chef nasty carp that we’ve come to expect, though I could have missed something. Some of her responses were just so off the wall, but beyond that, by the show’s end I found her endearing.
I am glad that Stefan didn’t win. He got waaaaayyyyy too cocky near the end. He always had an attitude, but it just went too far; perhaps insecurity got the better of him, appearances to the contrary.
I always felt his fascination with Jamie was an egotistical machismo thing. “Can I get a professed lesbian to switch.”
As you would write: “Gah.”
And I agree that the show has run its course.
Word Bandit’s last blog post..“I Told You So . . .”
Hi, Word! Stefan was insufferable from the get-go. Here’s some of what I wrote in my recap of the first episode:
Stefan, a Finn who won the Quickfire and immunity for the Elimination challenge, is already Mr. Boasty Boast Know-It-All and is ticking people off. One contestant says, “He holds his head high.” Cocky is a better description and I already don’t like him…..Boasty Stefan wins and smugly tells us he wants to be the first European to win Top Chef and seems damn confident. Apparently they didn’t hear about Dewey Defeats Truman in Finland.
I never warmed up to Hosea or any of them. I caught a few moments of him on the bed with the woman (I never did learn most of their names) and when she said they were only flirting my response was, Yeah the kind of flirting that got Bristol Palin knocked up.
Carla totally creeped me out every time I saw her. She did herself in by letting Casey lead her by the nose, especially with French food, when Casey a) lost Season 3 b) lost Season 3 with French food c) lost with a dish she even couldn’t pronounce correctly – coq au vin. (”cocoa vonn” in Casey-speak)
But she’s a shoo-in for the fan favorite $$$. The Bravo poll of who should have won says, as of a few minutes ago, Carla 54%, Hosea 14% and Stefan 33%. Comments on Gail Simmons’ blog are very much against the results and the season in general.
Too, too long a season. it began 8 days after the election; just think of all that’s transpired since then, even how many holidays we’ve had. I’m tempted to say this was not the way to show the Weinsteins they don’t need PR, but Bravo claims this was the best TC season, ratings-wise, so what do I know?
Thanks for your thoughts!
PS – Yes, there is a disclaimer during the credits that producers have input, although the judges have claimed they’ve never interfered. After S4, when the best but unlikable chef got booted the one and only time Colicchio wasn’t there, I don’t believe it. I’m convinced they wanted a woman to win, period.