Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio
Top Chef wraps up Season 9 on Wednesday with its reunion episode (9/8c, Bravo), and if you ask us, it couldn't come a moment sooner.
That's not because we want to see Heather and Beverly square off, but we want to move on as quickly as possible from this underwhelming season. The series proudly boasted about its biggest season ever — 29 contestants! three cities! — in the state with the biggest motto of all, Texas, but it turns out bigger is not necessarily better. Between the new twists and the umpteenth team challenge, Season 9 was but a shadow of its former Emmy-winning self — and that's not even counting the overwrought drama between Beverly and Heather, Sarah and Lindsay. (Let's be real — there'll be drama every season.) Here are six reasons Top Chef: Texas has been a big letdown.
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Chris Jones
It was a day of highs and lows for Chris Jones on Top Chef. After winning the quickfire with Grayson, he came up short in the head-to-head elimination challenge with his healthy, but ultimately dry and underseasoned, take on a chicken salad sandwich for a 200-person block party. "I did everything I was supposed to do in prep and was way ahead of schedule, but I didn't think about a 110-degree day in the heat and having sandwiches sit out there with no refrigeration," Jones tells TVGuide.com. Find out why he knew he would get cut, why he was disappointed in the challenge, and the story behind his half-ponytail.
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Tylor Boring
Did Ty-Lör Boring think he was going to get eliminated during Top Chef's Restaurant Wars? No, but he doesn't have any objections to it. "The only thing I really remember is that Restaurant Wars is probably the worst service ever I have had in 20 years of cooking in 16 countries on four continents. It was just a very intense situation," he tells TVGuide.com. "And I remember thinking if I got sent home for that, then it would've been accordingly. And I was. There was no way to recover from it." The Brooklyn-based chef was dinged for underseasoning two dishes, but he doesn't think that was the boys team's most egregious error.
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Chris Crary
Overseasoning a dish is pretty unforgiveable on Top Chef, but "Malibu" Chris Crary didn't think his ultra-salty rub for his team's barbeque meat would doom him. "I knew I made a mistake, but I didn't think it was going to be me at all," he tells TVGuide.com. "I was pretty surprised. It seemed pretty close between the five of us." Alas, the resident eye candy got eliminated — but not before we got an eyeful of his favorite non-cooking pastime: painting naked women. See what "Malibu" Chris has to say about his hobby, Beverly's RV fire and more.
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Chuy Valencia
Chuy Valencia won the first two elimination challenges on Top Chef, but he couldn't make it a three-peat. Instead, the Chicago-based chef got the boot after overcooking his salmon with goat cheese dish. "I knew I was screwed so I was expecting it," he tells TVGuide.com. "It's hard to forgive overcooking something." Find out when he realized it all had gone wrong and why he's happy he got eliminated.
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Richie
After teams pulled an all-nighter to make chili on Top Chef, the judges added insult to injury when they made the losing team repurpose their chili mole in a cook-off, ending in Richie Farina's elimination. "It was just another twist that none of us expected," he tells TVGuide.com. "When they told us, we were like, 'What the f---?!' But I get it. It was a good way to differentiate ...
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