Spoilers for the Season 21 finale of Top Chef can be found throughout this article. Don’t say we didn’t warn ya.
Top Chef: Wisconsin may have been the 21st season of the long-running competition show, but it was also a series of firsts, with Kristin Kish taking the helm as host and a finale that was set on a literal cruise ship. In the end, chef Danny Garcia took home the win over fellow competitors Dan Jacobs and Savannah Miller. Yet for fans watching on TV his win was a surprise for many viewers. The good news? Judge Tom Colicchio is getting back into the comments section and has weighed in on the matter.
If you spent any time perusing tweets after the Top Chef finale hit the 2024 TV schedule, you may have noticed that some people have been upset about the outcome of Season 21. Not because Danny wasn’t a solid competitor–he in fact bagged $53,000 in previous challenges ahead of the finale and was an odds-on favorite as the season wore on. The thing is, the finale edit made it seem that maybe Dan had the edge, as one fan of the Bravo show called out to Tom:
Hey [Tom Colicchio] can you explain how Danny won? Please don’t say ‘he had better dishes’ because that’s not what we ‘heard’ from the judges. Unless there was a lot of editing, Dan should have won.
Tom’s proven he’s game for answering fan queries about Top Chef every now and again, and apparently this was one such occasion, because he responded to the fan on X to set the record straight.
From what you heard in the edit, yes, but if you heard the unedited hour and a half discussion it would have been clear Danny had the better meal.
To be clear, I watched the finale of Top Chef and it really did feel like we got a misleading edit, maybe not to the point when it seemed 100% clear that Dan beat Danny, but there were two courses where Dan seemingly had superior dishes and two courses Danny seemingly nabbed. They didn’t love the texture of Dan’s tuna in the first course. They didn’t love that Danny undercooked his lobster and were hit or miss on the "bold" chance he took with flavors during another one of the courses. They were gaga over his dessert though, and to me as a viewer, that's what made me feel Danny had the edge.
But I wouldn't have been shocked if Dan had won and a lot of fans had the expectation he was going to win. A lot of viewers even commented in the thread with Tom too, calling it a “bad edit” and “misleading.” One person said they were "just discussing" with a friend they for sure thought Dan had clinched it. Another person was a bit more salty in their personal criticism on X:
Then the editing is deliberately misleading? We saw lack of salt, 1/3 uncooked lobster and a dish no one knew how to eat, mysteriously win. There were almost no criticisms of Dan's food. Setting out to trick the audience undermines credibility.
Now, it’s not like Top Chef’s finale went out of its way to make everyone look great. It was very clear from the edit that Savannah had made too many mistakes, particularly on her lobster pasta dish, to really be in the running for the win. And I do still think it’s possible that Dan edged out Danny on some courses but the latter just blew everyone away so much with his dessert and with the presentation on his scallop dish that it was clear to the judges he was a cut above. I get why Top Chef probably didn't want to make the finale seem like a runaway, even, but it sounds like a large swathe of people have been feeling duped about what they got on their TV screens to wrap the season.
It's a shame, because we're talking about that instead of how Top Chef made history when Danny became the first Muslim, Puerto Rican, and Dominican winner. Or how Dan nearly took the big prize despite challenges he faced all season with having to work slow due to Kennedy's Disease -- a really notably tough road given Immunity changes and how Quickfires factored more this season.
The good news? There's always another year, as Top Chef will be back for Season 22.
