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Originally Posted by MontyBurns
Decent season so far but having not one, but two contestants who worked at the French Laundry seems kinda unfair. It's one of the top restaurants in the world. If you're working there you've kind of already made it. I'm sure they could get a job at any restaurant they wanted or get a investor to bankroll their own place just by name dropping "French Laundry". If neither of those 2 wins, they choked big time.
There's a youtube video of Bourdain visiting years ago on his "A Cook's Tour" tv show. Well worth the watch.
Working in a fine dining setting doesn’t necessarily lead to success in this show. Bryan Voltaggio is case in point on that and he is and was more accomplished than the two chefs you noted. The season that had two Chicago chefs from Homaro Cantu’s restaurant didn’t exactly do great when you took them out of the setting that they were extremely good in.
A reason that Kristen Kish and Stephanie Cmar did so well in these is that while they were like cooks, the restaurant they worked at was well known for being an incubator of ideas and did top chef-esque dinners in vastly smaller settings. Versatility matters a lot more than where you’ve worked the line at.