Spoiler alert: Every bit as delicious and dramatic as you’d expect.
Receiving an invite to be media for the pivotal episode of Top Chef, “Restaurant Wars,” felt like the Golden Ticket I’d been waiting for my entire reality TV-watching life. Goddess Padma had shone down upon me! Dining at Restaurant Wars came second only to being in the Room Where it Happened, a.k.a. seated at The Dinner Party from Hell.
For the uncultured, ahem, those unfamiliar with Top Chef‘s annual Restaurant Wars episode, it’s a season hallmark of the series for a couple of reasons. From a reality TV perspective, it produces some of the most dynamic, dramatic, and tense moments of the season. The remaining chefs have been whittled down to the most talented of the bunch, the food is at its zenith of execution, and the stakes are at their highest yet in the competition. From a superfan perspective, it plays out like a bingo board of episode tropes. Someone always tries an audacious dish despite extreme time constraints (often involving risotto). A team member always falls on their sword to save the rest of their losing team from elimination. The Front of House (FOH) is either wildly absent or wildly annoying to the judges. And this episode had it all.
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Dueling Dining
My Restaurant Wars experience started with a tour of the Toronto warehouse where the episode was filming. Whisked through a makeshift hallway, media got a glimpse of the episode’s war room, a Truman Show-esque setup with dozens of screens eyed on every inch of production, and a tight setup for glamorously lit “beauty shots” of all the episode’s dishes.
Media was split in two–half of us ate at Phlora and Phauna, a veggie-driven concept, while the others were seated at Nonna Pipón, pitched to us as a “grandma chic” family-style experience that balanced Latin and Italian flavors.
Our dining room was scattered with shotgun mics, producers running around set, and diners being ushered through the restaurant. Chaotic, yes, but also terribly exciting and fun. Even amongst the crazy, my mind–as it is at any other restaurant–was preoccupied with, “When is the food coming out?”
As a viewer of the series, filming a Top Chef episode feels especially enthralling because of the obvious–finally getting to eat the actual food being served. Tops for me at Nonna Pipón included the arancini, a bold but successful blend of aggressive flavors (chorizo and tuna), and the braised beef cheek with polenta and shaved ricotta salata, a delicious and unexpected addition that I will be attempting at home. Sadly, we didn’t get to try both restaurants, but even after comparing notes after the fact, it seemed Phlora and Phauna took home the win.
Eva Morreale at Nona Pipon and Phlora + Phauna.Eva Morreale
The episode’s edit aligned pretty much with how our dining experience played out. Phlora and Phauna did win. The newbie servers seemed stressed and confused. Our side’s FOH, Shuai, fluttered around the dining room anxiously. Our concerns and critiques about our dishes were flaws that the judges ended up picking apart, too. See a chunky romesco sauce and sad, too-crunchy churros. None of us were mic’d, but a stealth faux flower pot in the middle of our table played surrogate. Weirdly, even amongst the chaos, it was easy to relax and enjoy the meal as I would at any other restaurant. Maybe it was my Pollyanna attitude about the entire, in reality, bizarre situation, or maybe the illusion (and food) were just that good.
When I popped up on the episode, peevishly asking, “How many orders of this are we getting?”—prompting a narrative arc about serving sizes for Nonna Pipón’s family style concept–I squealed with equal parts delight and horror (I was shot on my bad side).
Risott-Oh-No
For starters, judges are just as aware of and baffled by the tropes of Restaurant Wars: “Why keep doing risotto? You don’t have to do it!” exclaims former contestant and current host, Kristen Kish, in a makeshift green room stationed somewhere behind Nonna Pipón for media interviews.
Tom Colicchio, consummate chef, goes on a tangent about how chefs ought to be executing Restaurant Wars, telling me that you know how many orders are going to be fired, just start firing and organizing them before your expo calls them out.
I (cowardly!) decided against making a crack about his penchant for hats–IYKYK. But I nabbed some insight into his approach on coaching and nurturing the chefs. “I care about getting good food and giving good feedback because that makes good TV.”
His passion for both pairs perfectly with his other Top Chef gig, judging Last Chance Kitchen, the mini competition series where ousted Cheftestants compete for a chance to return to their season. In fact, its most iconic moment might be Kish’s, who not only fought her way back to her season but won Top Chef in the end. It’s an often-cited “best of” moment of the series. So much so that when Top Chef’s Instagram account recently asked viewers to name their favorite moments of the series, many commented that it was Kish’s victory.
When I asked Kish about the moment and it being “full circle” to come back as host and judge, she offers a thoughtful philosophy. “You know, full circle is a funny thing…it’s actually the ending of something… you’re closing the loop.”
Another refreshing take came from judge and Toronto native Gail Simmons, who, alongside Kish and Colicchio, laid down the law for this season’s episode. No “globally-inspired cuisine” or restaurants named Pangea due to their mish-mosh of concepts. “[This time we] told them the type of concepts they weren’t allowed to do because there were certain patterns of concepts that chefs fall back on and they’re always opening this same type of restaurant.”
This led to better, more focused dishes, and an exciting and well-produced episode of television overall. She, too, is very familiar with the ol’ Restaurant Wars bingo, even remarking how it always comes down to FOH and The Exec Chef at Judges Table. Simmons also revealed that while grueling, Restaurant Wars is supposed to act as a way to “reinvigorate” the Cheftestants, getting them over the finish line and excited about the competition again at the midway point of the season.
Colicchio’s passion, Simmons deep understanding of and pride in the series, and Kish’s flair and literal good taste shine in their reflections on what makes the Restaurant Wars episode so special and important.
Upon my balking at Top Chef’s lack of Emmy’s (the series is repeatedly edged out by The Amazing Race and Rupaul’s Drag Race), Colicchio reacts with his famed eye roll-shrug-arm-cross combo, “I’m not doing this for TV…we make a good TV show because we don’t care about making a good TV show.”
Top Chef airs on Thursdays at 9PM ET on Bravo.
