Top Chef's annual rite of passage

And the sad reality of an elimination

Restaurant Wars is a rite of passage for Top Chef contestants. Not only is it a team challenge where your fate is tied to how well others do, but it’s also an incredibly stressful challenge. It certainly tests resilience and flexibility alongside cooking skills. Sometimes chefs want to play it safe by not being the executive chef or the front of the house - but line cooks have gone home in eight of 23 seasons (34%).

Last season, I wrote about whether we would lose a front-runner in that season’s Restaurant Wars. This is an extension of that piece in that it discusses the rank of the chefs eliminated in each season’s Restaurant Wars and adds on their NPT+. (Check out my full article on what this means). I’ll be looking at chefs’ NPT+ prior to Restaurant Wars so the results from latter parts of seasons aren’t affecting non-eliminated chefs. The rank is for all chefs in the season; if a chef who was eliminated in RW had an NPT+ worse than chefs who had already been eliminated, that is reflected in their rank.

This is your spoiler warning - what follows will spoil this season’s and all past seasons’ Restaurant Wars eliminations.

Restaurant Wars in Season 23

Brandon had been doing well this season - I did a status check a few weeks ago, plus Kendra and I talk a lot about him on Track Your Knives. Heading into Restaurant Wars, Brandon’s NPT+ (the stat that allows comparison of a chef’s performance to all other Top Chef contestants across seasons) was tied for third, along with Jonathan and Day. An NPT+ of 183 means they were 83% better than the average chef.

Day’s and Jassi’s NPT+, because they were in less than five challenges, should be interpreted with caution.

Restaurant Wars Across Seasons

The number 1 ranked chef has been eliminated in Restaurant Wars only three times: Seasons 16, 17, and 19. We’ve lost a front runner or contender - someone who ranks 3rd or better - in 13 of 23 seasons. That’s what happened in this week’s Restaurant Wars, with Brandon tied at 3rd in his season. (If you’re looking closely at the below table, please note that I didn’t count the s’mores Quickfire in the count of number of challenges. Don’t come at me, bro.)

Fun fact: In Season 16, it was a double elimination. Nini Nguyen was ranked #1 with an NPT+ of 254 (154% better than the average Top Chef contestant heading into RW). Her NPT+ is the third highest NPT+ of anyone eliminated in Restaurant Wars (Jackson Kalb in Season 19 holds that record, followed by Kevin Gillespie in Season 17). The other eliminated contestant, Pablo Lamon, had an NPT+ of 95. He was ranked 7th, and is one of seven chefs who were eliminated with an NPT+ under 100.

More than half of Top Chef seasons have seen a contender or front-runner go home. It’s kind of sad - but also feels iconic and appropriate. Given that the eliminated chef is about evenly split between roles (executive chef, line cook, and front of house), I hope that chefs in future seasons will feel more comfortable taking the risk and volunteering to be executive chef.