Why Jen Will Win

Season 6 of Top Chef is far and away my favorite season to date. When the cast was announced and you read their bios, you could tell that the producers raised their qualifications and went after some really talented chefs.

Jen was a chef from Philly, working as the chef de cuisine at Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin who put up with no one's crap (I'm looking at you Hector).

By the close of the first episode, everyone could predict that Jen was going to be in the Final 4. But after a strong start, Jen's performance tapered off in the middle of the season and it seemed to be her own undoing. She would mentally beat herself up over little mistakes and carry them over from challenge-to-challenge and episode-to-episode.

This stumble lead to a resurgence in the kitchen and paved the way for one of my all-time favorite moments in Top Chef history. In a Quickfire Challenge that honored the Bocuse d'Or, chefs had to create their own ballotine (a.k.a. a fancy turducken). Padma took one bite of Jen's calamari dish, looked up and simply said "Welcome back."

Ultimately Jen finished in fourth place and was sent home because of an over-salted goat cheese dish.

But this post isn't about who she was in Season 6, it is about why she will win Season 8. There's no doubt in my mind that after watching her own season, Jen studied each episode as if they were NFL game tapes. Not because she thought that one day she would be on an All-Stars cast, but because she wanted to improve her own abilities. It's this quest towards perfection that is going to put Jen at the top of the class in Season 8.

Forecasted Rivalry: Jen vs. DaleT
Two chefs with A-type personalities that love to assert themselves in the kitchen. If Jen tries to shut down one of Dale's conversations in the kitchen, I can foresee a couple of damaged lockers in the future thanks (again) to Dale's fists.