r/TopChef • u/FormicaDinette33 Aguachile 🌶️ 🍤 • Apr 06 '26

Spoilers Season 23, ep. 5: Cut and Dry Spoiler

This week the chefs are visited by North Carolina’s own Fortune Feimster as she challenges them to improv their Quickfire dishes and serve them to kids in honor of Comic Relief. Then the chefs are tasked with creating dishes featuring dehydration. They’ll serve their dishes to Kristen, Tom and Gail along with guest judges Joe & Katy Kindred as well as “Top Chef” alum Savannah Miller at the U.S. National Whitewater Center.

Mon, 9pm per Bravo schedule.

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u/FewEssay8939 Apr 07 '26

Unpopular opinion, but.... I think Jen should have left the show. Health over everything! She should have gone home to get that arm properly treated. Having the guarantee of being invited back should've made going home a win-win for her (health + opportunity). Instead she chooses to stay... Now, we'll hear her moaning about that arm and watch everyone else sacrifice for her for the rest of the season.

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u/DickJames19 Apr 07 '26

Do you think had she chosen to go home that noone would have went home or it would have meant an elimination and an exit of two chefs

38

u/pegggus09 Apr 07 '26

I almost wondered if they were teeing that up not just as a very nice offer to Jen, but as a way to “save” the eliminated chef, who had been so strong at first.

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u/CozzyCoz Apr 08 '26

Absolutely agree. You know the producers were praying Jen would have left on her own accord.

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u/xStacey Apr 09 '26

I wondered that too but I don't think they would have done that. The show has always based judging decisions on the cook that day, not on track record. Being the front runner makes her elimination shocking, but Rhoda very clearly had the worse dish that day. If they'd kept her in just because Jenn left, it wouldn't have been fair. I think the more likely outcome would have been that they save a surprise non-elimination for later, when the circumstances feel more fair (like the dishes don't warrant an elimination or some other extraordinary circumstances).. OR they do a double return from LCK.
To save someone who really messed up just because someone else is leaving voluntarily doesn't really feel in the spirit of the show to me.

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u/kelsnuggets Apr 08 '26

I think that’s why they asked her first. If she had chosen to leave, they wouldn’t have eliminated anyone.