Top Chef S9 finale.

Last night’s Top Chef season finale answered the question: is Paul the ’27 Yankees or the ’07 Patriots?

* Sarah begins by talking about momentum; is there really a “hot hand” in the kitchen? Maybe if you grab a pan preheated to 500 degrees without using an oven mitt. Not that I’ve ever done that.

* Meanwhile, Paul is clearly full of nervous energy once he learns he’s in the finale. Either that or he was mainlining Red Bull in between takes.

* Challenge: Hey, we’re cooking! Create a four-course menu in the restaurant of your dreams. No gimmicks beyond the selection of sous-chefs, which is done by having a selection of eliminated chefs plus two renowned chefs, Barbara Lynch and Marco Canora, each prepare a single dish for Paul and Sarah to taste; those two then select the dishes they liked and get the chefs who made them. I have no problem with this except that having the two expert chefs compete seemed a little silly.

* The group even includes a few of the chefs who were eliminated before reaching the final 16, among them the infamous butcher Tyler Stone, who has to be here just for the comedy potential; and Ashley Villaluz, who I remember because she’s really cute, even in those thick-framed eyeglasses. (Or, especially in those thick-framed eyeglasses.)

* Paul chooses first … and gets Barbara Lynch with the first pick. Hugh says this “is like getting Albert Pujols for a tee ball game.” I need Hugh to be a permanent addition to the Judges’ Table. Paul also gets Malibu Chris, who did an Asian-inspired dish to try to get Paul to choose him (bromance alert!), Ty-Lor, and Keith.

* Sarah gets Nyesha and immediately pigeonholes her (or says she will) as her saucier. Nyesha’s fierce, a shoo-in if they do another All-Stars show in a few years, and this feels like taking your best hitter and asking him to drop a bunt in the two-hole. Sarah tries to pick Heather by taking a dish that’s on Heather’s restaurant’s menu (good logic) but instead gets Tyler and then insults him in front of everyone. She ends up with Heather anyway as well as Grayson, so the team is pretty strong outside of Butcherboy.

* Marco doesn’t get picked. That’s got to hurt. Some head-hanging as he, Ashley, and the other guy whose name I can’t remember slink off.

* Meanwhile, I can’t decide if the editors just tried to make Tyler look bad, or if he did it all by himself. Asking your chef a ton of questions to make sure you’re not screwing something up doesn’t bother me – remember Restaurant Wars, Sarah? – but pushing the sous vide technique when Sarah said she’s not comfortable doing something for the first time in the finale or just flat-out disobeying her instructions is really out of line, and I don’t think you can edit that stuff in.

* But I do think the editors tweaked some of the footage of Barbara Lynch to make her look a little pushy in the early going. Later footage shows her very team-focused in the kitchen, and by the end, she was all praise for Paul, even saying “working with Paul is amazing” and she’s very “proud to have this opportunity.” How does Paul hear this stuff and still have no ego?

* The chefs shop at Granville Market, which is awesome. Every city should have something like that.

* Sarah, on managing Tyler: “(I’m) ‘trying to make Tyler feel like I actually give a shit.” Again, the red light means THE CAMERA IS ON.

* Contrast Tyler’s style to one clip we see of Ty-Lor asking Paul for a quick demo on preparing the radishes. Professional and fast. Could be editing, but in this case, I doubt it.

* They spelled Keith wrong (“Kieth”) on the assignment board. It’s a five-letter, one-syllable name people. And it’s not that uncommon: Keith Hernandez. Keith Sweat. Keith Richards. Keith Moon. Keith Urban. Maybe I was supposed to be a musician.

* First big hiccup for either chef comes when the crab for Paul’s first dish develops an off flavor overnight. Keith says the “crab sat overnight,” but where? On the counter? In the fridge but unwrapped? There’s a mistake in there that we never hear about. Paul was prepared with a backup plan, having bought spot prawns he wasn’t otherwise using, which is impressive. (Also good: Canadian wild-caught spot prawns are an environmentally-friendly shellfish option, as populations are abundant and traps do minimal damage to the habitats.)

* To the food: Paul leads with a chawanmushi with those spot prawns; the first group raves, but the second batch is all overcooked and is easily the worst dish either chef served. Second dish is grilled sea bass (loup de mer, which I think is really branzino) with clam dashi and pickled radishes, earning raves for aesthetics and depth of flavor; Tom says it’s “hard to fault this,” so I guess he’s in a good mood here. Third dish is a congee with eggs, uni, fried kale, and smoked albacore; Tom says not as interesting as other courses, Cat loves fish says it doesn’t fit, but it seems to have worked on a more subtle level, with Bill Terlato apparently saying it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. (I can’t take Cat Cora seriously as a judge. Is she really on par with the other chefs who appear on this show? She’s just here to promote her new Bravo program, right?) Dessert is coconut ice cream (frozen with liquid nitrogen!) with puffed rice, candied kumquats, mangosteen, Thai chili foam, and jasmine gelee; it’s a beautiful dish, and the judges were pleasantly surprised by the heat in the foam, with Tom saying Paul “really knocked it out of the park” but Hugh quibbling with the texture (too hard) of the puffed rice. Outside of the custard fiasco for group two, it sounds like Paul nailed it the rest of the way.

* Sarah starts very strongly with a squid-ink tagliatelle with dashi, coconut, and raw spot prawn dish that may have been the best-reviewed dish of the night. She follows with a rye-crusted steelhead with caramelized fennel sauce and pickled beets; judges love the fish, but she didn’t cook the beets at all (rookie error? Don’t you at least heat the acid and blanch the beets?) and there was probably too much fennel; there’s some irony here, as Butcher Boy was pushing her to sous vide the beets. That dish caused some legitimate drama when her fiance found a pinbone in his fish, but Sarah went into crisis mode and checked all dishes still in the kitchen to remove any stray bones. (I’ve still never found a great way to remove them without damaging the flesh – needlenose pliers are the best option, but I usually end up tearing some of the surrounding fish.) The fish was well-cooked and even Bev said she liked the crust.

* Her third course was veal cheeks and sweetbreads with polenta and persimmon sauce that looked, um, “rustic” on the plate, and was probably her worst dish, with every component but the cheeks getting criticism somewhere, particularly the texture of the polenta, which she then blended to smooth out for the second seating. Hugh also thought the sweetbreads were overcooked. I love persimmons, and could see a persimmon sauce with a rich meat like veal cheek or sweetbread being outstanding, but pairing that with polenta (which I’ve never seen without some kind of cheese as a binder) sounds like an off-note in my head. But the hazelut cake with roasted white chocolate ganache was a home run, particularly the ganache. Padma – I knew I liked this woman for some reason, aside from her stunning good looks that is – looks at Sarah and says with distaste dripping from the corners of her mouth, “I hate white chocolate.” (I do too. It’s not even actually chocolate.) But Sarah roasts it in a low oven for a half-hour to start to caramelize all that sugar, prompting one judge to say that she “turned it into caramel.” The dish was really striking on the plate as well. I confess that I’d rather have this precise dish with an almond cake instead of hazelnuts, but hazelnuts have always been my least favorite nut – there’s a specific chemical in there that, as often as I’ve had them, I just can’t get used to, and it triggers a mildly unpleasant aftertaste. This sucks, as it ruins Nutella for me.

* Before I get to the results, two interesting notes. Paul refuses to blame Keith for the problems with the chawanmushi: He won’t blame Keith in the kitchen, in the confessional, or at Judges’ Table. This is how you lead.

* Also, I think the producers, for once, undersold a dramatic element – Paul’s father breaking down when he sees his son in the finals. We hear from a lot of chefs on this show that their parents questioned their career choices and often weren’t proud of their chef sons/daughters, so winning this show would be some sort of redemption. (I’ll leave the question of whether pride earned in this way is really that valuable to a therapist.) It came up with Paul and Bev this year, at least, but we didn’t get much follow-up here in the one instance where the chef and the formerly disapproving parent were reunited on camera.

* Judges’ Table: Judging appears to be close to a dead heat, with Tom saying it was the best food ever in a finale, something he reiterated in his by-the-numbers blog entry. But he said what I thought they were trying to say on the show, something that was edited down to maintain suspense: Paul’s menu was more ambitious and showed greater dexterity in managing and manipulating flavors and textures, right down to the less beautiful but more thrilling dessert. And Paul, the Chef of Destiny from pretty much the first episode, is Top Chef. I am pleased. But I’d still gladly eat at Spiaggia, Sarah’s restaurant. (And, for what it’s worth, I think Emeril would have picked Sarah.)

* And that wraps a very up-and-down season of Top Chef, but one that finished with two really strong challenges that returned the focus of the show to the food. The best chef won, and the gimmicks gave us lots to snark about. I can’t complain too much.

* I started these recaps as a lark because the one blogger whose recaps I was reading just missed the mark for me, and I had too many stray thoughts I wanted to write down as I watched. It turned into a pretty popular feature here – I’ve had scouts, agents, and even a player’s father comment on them when I’ve been out at games – and led to a great personal thrill, writing for the official Top Chef site on Bravotv.com. Thank you all for reading and commenting. I’ll pick it up again whenever Top Chef returns.