Welcome to Cosentino Watch, where we recap the moves of San Francisco chef Chris Cosentino as he competes in Top Chef Masters. Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Finally, we're at the finale, and we know what we came here to do. Chris Cosentino and Kerry Heffernan have swiftly eliminated their competition over the past two months, and it's all come down to one final meal.
Host Curtis Stone explains that there is no Quickfire Challenge this time and only one four-course dinner separates them from the chance to win $100,000 for their charity. The final challenge is to bare their soul on the plate by writing four letters and translating them into a four-course meal. They'll need to write/serve a love letter, an apology, a thank you note, and finally a letter to themselves.
"There's a lot of emotion involved," Cosentino says of cooking. "I think that's what food's about. We put everything we have on the plate, our heart and our soul, to showcase who we are."
See Also:
- Top Chef Masters: Cosentino Watch, Episode 9
- Top Chef Masters: Cosentino Watch, Episode 8
- Top Chef Masters: Cosentino Watch, Episode 7
Stone tells the chefs that an extra pair of hands has been invited in the kitchen to help them. Cosentino is stoked to see Manfred Wrembel, his chef de cuisine at Incanto for the past six years.
"Oh my God, I am so relieved," he says. "Manfred's almost like a mini-me."
"I'm glad he's not mad at me for being here," Wrembel grins after receiving a big hug.
"Wait a minute," Cosentino asks, "Who is running the restaurant?"
Heffernan's old buddy Nick Liberato not only taught him how to surf, he's often worked with Heffernan on large, last-minute events, so Heffernan is also very glad to see who his assistant will be.
Stone gives them a $600 budget and the rest of the day to prep and shop, plus two hours the next day to finalize and plate the meals. Heffernan decides to get all of his ingredients at Whole Foods because he doesn't want to spend too much time outside the kitchen. Cosentino plans trips to the butcher, the Asian specialty market 99 Ranch, and Whole Foods. He's confident in what he's planning, but once he's out in insufferable Las Vegas traffic, he gets nervous.
His love letter will be to his wife and represented by a dish of beef heart tartare with foie gras and tendon puffs. He calls it "my heart on a plate."
"Foie gras adds the fat that the beef heart does not have," he explains. "When you combine these two together they're a perfect marriage and that's what I have. My wife has put up with me being a broke-ass line cook to me coming home broken down talking about the woes of owning a business. She is a super mom and is just amazing. She supported me so I could live the dream. This is my love letter to her."
His great-grandmother Rosalie Cosentino is the recipient of his thank you note. "My great grandmother is the reason why I cook these cuts of meat," he shares. "She'd cook the real peasant foods that she grew up with."
He asks for fresh pork blood and beef tripe at the butcher counter at 99 Ranch.
"One day I go to visit when I was a little kid and I smelled this horrid smell," he recalls of Rosalie. "She was cooking tripe, which is the stomach lining of an animal. God, did I hate the smell. How ironic is it now that's what I'm known for? So this is my thank you to my great-grandmother Rosalie Cosentino for helping me create who I am."
Heffernan doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about his letters; he figures they'll sort of arise after he thinks of the dishes. He's decided to try to recreate a lobster dish he made for his wife when they were courting, but Whole Foods has run out of lobster, so he selects some spot prawns as a substitute. Despite not really thinking the letters through, he's insistent that he's got the competitive advantage because he did his shopping quickly.
"Chris is consumed with his shopping expedition and that's a leg up for us because we just have to hunker down and do it," Heffernan says.
Cosentino laments that Heffernan is probably going to be an hour ahead of him in the kitchen because of his traffic woes, but he still shops at all three of his planned places. He thinks that Heffernan might have relieved Whole Foods of all of its fresh oregano and chives, but ultimately it doesn't seem like that will throw him off his game.
By the end of the day, Heffernan still hasn't figured out who his apology letter will be to (we suggest he address it to the high school students he bullied in last week's episode) but he doesn't seem stressed about it.
They head to a penthouse suite at the Cosmopolitan to meet Stone, who has cooked dinner especially for them. He's made two dishes, each inspired by the finalists. For Cosentino, he makes a foie gras torchon with a cold Sauternes gelée. Cosentino remarks on how nice it is to have a conversation with Stone outside of the competition; it puts him at ease for the evening at least.
Stone asks if he's learned anything from the competition, and Cosentino replies, "I'm excited about the fact that I can still cook. Sometimes I question myself at the restaurant. You know when you're buried in paperwork and like, 'When am I just gonna cook?' Having this has been great because all I've been doing is cooking. And I've loved it."
The next day, back in the kitchen, Cosentino explains what his last two dishes will be. His letter to himself will be represented by the dish he'd most like to eat as his last meal, a sunny side up fried egg with poached oysters and blood sausage.
"I call it my last supper because this is something that I truly wanna eat before I die," he asserts.
Blood sausage is a very serious process, he explains, and it's tense in the kitchen as he and Wrembel get to making them. They make 36 of them and 20 start to pop out of their casings when frying in a skillet. Cosentino hopes he hasn't chosen the wrong dish and that he'll have enough. He reveals that his family founded Newport, Rhode Island and with them came making sausage; that's why it's one of his favorite things to do in the kitchen.
Cosentino's wife is also going to get the apology letter, which will be a pork and scallop dish -- her favorite proteins.
"I love my wife so much and I work so damn much. I don't get to be the best husband in the world or the best father, so this is an apology letter. it's something that would really make her happy."
The judges for the finale are all food critics, which makes the challenge that much more tense. The first courses come out -- Cosentino's beef heart tartare versus Heffernan's scallop and spot prawn jjigae, a Korean stew.
Judge Krista Simmons loves Cosentino's presentation: "It's like a steampunk version of steak tartare," she offers.
Stone admires the balls it took to serve raw heart. "I can't believe he did it!"
Back in the kitchen, Cosentino is struggling a bit with his second course. He calls it a "shitshow" and says they were too complacent with how easily the first course went.
However, once the apology to his wife emerges in the form of a 24-hour pancetta Piana that melts over a scallop and is topped with sea urchin sauce, the judges seem pleased. Some of them, anyway. CHOW's Jane Goldman found the scallop too salty, while Los Angeles magazine's Lesley Bargar Suter likens the dish to "makeup sex."
"I think this is one of the sexiest plates of food that I've ever been served," says Ruth Reichl. "Melted pork fat that's hugging the scallop? Apology accepted!"
Cosentino admits that Heffernan's second course, a snap pea flan with prosciutto and morel mushrooms, looks refined. He's concerned. "This one scares me," he says.
The third course is the thank you note, and Cosentino tells the judges how he started cooking offal.
"I've kind of been known as the gut man and I kind of owe that all to my great-grandmother Rosalie Cosentino," he explains. "She came from Naples and when I was a little boy I used to go visit her and I used to run out of the house when I smelled tripe. In fear. And this is my thank you to her for teaching me the magic and the wonders of tripe."
Vegas-based critic John Curtas loves the trippa Napolitana, as it's called.
"This is an absolutely extraordinary dish," says Curtas. "I mean, I can't think of a better thank you to a relative, especially an Italian relative, than this tripe dish."
Heffernan's thank you letter is to his family, who taught him Cape Cod traditions like clamming when he grew up. His dish combines mustard greens with clams and a ragout with branzino and bacon.
Back in the kitchen for the final course, and Heffernan is starting to get cocky, based on nothing at all.
"You guys got big balls, I tell you!" he taunts. "Fried eggs! That's much bigger balls than cote de boeuf!"
In a later interview, he sneers, "Chris has a sausage and a fried egg, which seems very simple for the finale. if people were looking for more complexity, it can be rather tragic."
Heffernan presents the letter to himself as a "picture of who I am right now, and maybe a bit excessive." His dry aged 21-day cote de boeuf is served with braised short ribs, swiss chard, and a garlic and fennel potato gratin. "It's okay to have something great and it's okay to revel in that joy." His lack of thinking his letters through is really showing.
Cosentino comes out to serve his last supper, explaining that he's made a fried egg and blood sausage and poached his oysters in pork stock.
"The best way to be put in the ground," he declares of the dish. "I have air, land, and sea all in one plate."
Curtas, who loved the tripe so dearly, turns super grumpy. "I thought it was embarrassingly bad," he announces, and James Oseland gives him a crazy look. "I mean, to put this out at the finale of Top Chef Masters? It's blood sausage, which I've had much better many other places. Chris shoulda brought his A-game and to me this is a D-game."
Francis Lam counters with what's later declared the line of the night: "That poached oyster is like if you took a swim in the ocean, you're doing the backstroke, the sun is hitting you, you're feeling good, and all of a sudden a pig comes and gives you a back rub. it's the best thing I've eaten in maybe the last 30 years of my life." (It should be noted that Lam is not much over 30-years-old.)
After the cooking is done, the finalists await their fate in the back. "I'm total nervous eating right now," Cosentino says, while picking at a plate.
They're called in to face the judges. Stone asks Cosentino how he felt it went.
"I think it went really well. There's always that question of do you cook for the critic and unfortunately the answer's no. And I had to cook meat."
"Are you more important than the diner, Chris?" Stone counters.
"When you cook with your heart and soul it comes through in the food. When you cook just to receive accolades, I think you lose direction and focus of what your goal is."
They praise Cosentino for putting so much of himself into this challenge.
"I love the nakedness of what you showed us in the letter to yourself," says Lam.
"We got a little insight into you, you know, you just go for it -- this is who I am on a plate," says Reichl.
"That's what you guys asked for," says Cosentino.
It's now time for the winner to be announced, and as we've been telling you allllll along this journey, there can be only one winner and that's Chris Cosentino.
He brought in $141,000 for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, and thanks to a matching donor lined up by the charity, that means $282,000 goes to the cause.
He looks shocked and weak in the knees when his name is called. He's surprised that he's won.
"I took a chance and did what I did and, win or lose, I wouldn't have done it any other way. Guts prevail, thank God!"
"Winning is a big apology to my family for being away, for working, for never stopping," he says, choking up. "It's kind of my way of justifying it all and doing the right thing for once."He's fitted into his Top Chef Masters jacket and poured a glass of champagne, the beginning of a whole new adventure for our local hero.
