I’ve never made a secret of the fact that Top Chef is easily my favorite reality show. I love the competitions, the drama and I think that the judges are some of the most knowledgeable and respected minds in the culinary world (although I think that Padma sometimes pretends to be a little more knowledgeable than she should).

Last night was the competition finale. Held in the historic Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, Hosea, Carla and Stefan competed in the best competition of the season - cook [the judges] the best three-course meal of your life.

Even Stefan responded by saying something to the effect of, “No challenge? That makes it tougher.”

I had some high hopes for this season. I felt like it was deep with talented chefs, particularly Team Europe (Stefan and Fabio), but I felt like two of the most talented chefs (Jamie and Jeff) were eliminated entirely too early. And while Carla grew on me eventually, the fact that she made it as deep as she did was pretty shocking. She took far too long to find her groove and should have been eliminated earlier.

As far as Hosea winning…I picked him around week four as a finalist and Alli put it best last night when she said, “He seems like a small-town chef. He needs more everything. More experience, more exposure, just more.” Too true. Because currently, I’d say that Hosea is battling Ilan as the worst winning Top Chef of the five seasons. He has a lot of potential and he cooks good food, but there were two huge problems that Hosea encountered:

• He was far too motivated by Stefan. Stefan will not be in his kitchen down the road to challenge him, so he’d better find some more motivation.
• The whole thing with Leah. That was not classy at all. And the on-the-mouth kiss after he won it all…well, we’ll see what that meant in the horribly-hosted reunion show next week.

My highlights of the season:

• The Super Bowl challenge. I loved that one, especially seeing the crazy “I have a culinary boner” Andrew again.
• Thanksgiving dinner for the Foo Fighters.
• The Le Bernadin challenge. Having to recreate Eric Ripert’s food in his restaurant for him…that’s nothing short of daunting.
• The premiere. It was a great way to weed out people and gave them plenty of opportunities to save themselves.
• Toby Young. He can’t really replace Gail, but he was a decent replacement for Ted Allen, who went off to host that horrible Chopped show on the Food Network.

It certainly wasn’t my favorite season of all, but I’m ready for the next season to start. I’m hoping that in the future, they’ll downplay Padma a little more and bring back Tom C. into the mix. He’s such a great chef and I felt like he was lacking from this season.