Top Chef Masters: Rick Bayless Wins

I was wrong when I blogged about Top Chef Masters yesterday. It was not a two part ending and it was not only season 1 winner, Harold Dieterle being a guest judge, it was all the Top Chef winners. My DVR sorted it all out for me and recorded what it needed to record.

I'm a fan of Top Chef Masters and its winner, Rick Bayless. I want to eat his Mexican food.

There was no Quickfire Challenge. The 3 remaining masters were driven to the Getty Villa, it being a huge mansion in the Los Angeles zone. There they were told to prepare a 4 course meal, with course 1 representing their first food memory and other courses representing things like their first success and where they are now.

Part way into the prepping the chefs were surprised to get a helper in the form of one of the chefs from their own restaurants.

I have trouble remember details, so there is no way I can remember the names of the dishes these guys cooked. Suffice to say it was all complicated, all looked good and, apparently, judging by the swooning of the judges, for the most part, tasted incredible.

When the time came to count those stars, Hubert Keller came in third. And then Rick Bayless got one more star than Michael Chiarello. Making him Top Chef Master.

The judges waxed poetic about the revelatory nature of the Mexican cuisine, with one commenting that Rick Bayless has shown them that Mexican cuisine is on par with French and Italian in terms of complexity and sophistication.

I want some of that mole with all those ingredients that caused more food swooning than I've ever heard.

At the end, Rick Bayless was sort of touching when he said of all the chefs he was the one with no formal training. He is a self taught chef. His dad ran a BBQ joint in which dad was the Pit Master. Rick Bayless said his dad, the Pit Master, would be so proud that his son was the Top Chef Master.

Tonight I hope to manage to watch last night's Padma show and see the new Top Chef'testants.