Who was the best Top Chef?

            By my count, there have been 196 contestants of Top Chef over the course of twelve seasons. The early seasons of Top Chef were the rockiest. The judges and producers were trying to work out the kinks, establish the show’s rhythms, and attract talented chefs. Most fans would agree that the show really hit its stride with Top Chef Chicago (season 4). Throughout that season, local chef Stephanie Izard battled the molecular gastronomist Richard Blais up until the finale when Izard emerged victorious. Since then, the seasons of Top Chef have largely risen and fallen on the talent of the assembled chefs. The show has demonstrated some noteworthy highs in terms of culinary talent and creativity—Top Chef Las Vegas (season 6), Top Chef All-Stars (season 8), and Top Chef Boston (season 12)—and cringe-worthy lows—the bullying of an Asian chef in Top Chef Texas (season 9), attempting to pass off cream cheese as a local, sustainable product in Top Chef New Orleans (season 11), and the ceaseless product integration (Win a Toyota Camry! Pack your ingredients in Gladware! Make sure you please the Chase Sapphire Preferred Diners!). But the question that brings us together is: who was the best contestant in the history of Top Chef?    

      In order to answer that question, I devised a simple points system (described below). This scoring system hopes to reward each season’s winner while also recognizing the skill of chefs who performed well, but failed to win. Since the goal of the show is to capture the title of Top Chef, I felt that a sizeable bonus should be awarded to the overall winner.

The system is as follows:

·         4 points for winning the weekly elimination challenge

·         2 points for winning the weekly quickfire challenge

·         2 points for finishing in the top 3 for the elimination challenge

·         -2 points for finishing in the bottom 3 for the elimination challenge

·         -6 points for being eliminated

·         8 points for winning Top Chef

With all the boring technical stuff out of the way, let’s get down to it. We’ll begin with the strongest 20 contestants in the history of the show based on point total (All results were tabled from the contestant progress charts on each season’s Wikipedia page).

Ranking	Contestant (Season-Finish)	Elimination Wins	Quickfires	High Finishes	Low Finishes	Total Points	Win %
1	Paul  (9-1)	8	2	0	1	42	0.37037
2	Richard (8-1)	4	4	4	1	38	0.266667
T-3	Stephanie (4-1)	4	2	6	3	34	0.230769
T-3	Michael (6-1)	3	2	6	1	34	0.185185
T-5	Kristen (10-1)	4	1	1	0	28	0.185185
T-5	Mei (12-1)	3	1	5	2	28	0.148148
7	Kevin (6-3)	5	4	3	1	26	0.333333
8	Hung (3-1)	1	4	5	3	24	0.192308
9	Gregory (12-2)	5	4	4	4	22	0.333333
T-10	Richard (4-3)	4	3	3	1	20	0.269231
T-10	Doug (12-3)	4	2	3	0	20	0.222222
T-10	Nicholas (11-1)	3	3	2	5	20	0.2
T-10	Harold (1-1)	1	2	4	2	20	0.166667
T-10	Nina (11-2)	3	2	7	2	20	0.166667
T-15	Brooke (10-2)	5	3	2	3	18	0.296296
T-15	Shirley (11-3)	4	4	1	1	18	0.266667
T-15	Bryan (6-2)	4	0	4	0	18	0.148148
T-15	Stefan (5-3)	4	4	2	3	16	0.296296
T-18	Tiffany (7-5)	2	2	5	0	16	0.148148
T-18	Ilan (2-1)	2	1	2	3	16	0.136364

·         Paul Qui of Top Chef Texas comes out on top. This is not a surprising result as Qui dominated his season, winning eight elimination challenges and only facing elimination once.

·         Fan favorite Richard Blais (widely considered the best contestant in the show’s history) comes in second for his performance in Top Chef All-Stars. Blais’s impressive showing in Top Chef Chicago landed him tied for tenth, despite suffering the penalty for being eliminated.

·         Unsurprisingly the winners of Top Chef dominate the leader board. Of the top twenty spots, ten of them are held by winners of Top Chef (only Kevin from Top Chef Washington D.C. and Hosea of Top Chef New York fail to make the list). The average finish of the contestants in this group is 1.9.

Total points, however, is not the only way to measure success. The scoring system reflects the structure of the show, meaning the bonus awarded to winners may skewer the result in their favor. This is similar to deciding the best team in Major League Baseball based solely on who won the World Series. Sometimes the best teams wins out, but sometimes luck and other factors get in the way. So in place of points, I’ve sorted the results by win percentage. This way we can remove the bonus for winning the title of Top Chef and instead focus just on which chef won the highest percentage of challenges.

Ranking	Contestant (Season-Finish)	Elimination Wins	Quickfires	High Finishes	Low Finishes	Total Points	Win %
1	Paul (9-1)	8	2	0	1	42	0.37037
T-2	Kevin (6-3)	5	4	3	1	26	0.333333
T-2	Gregory (12-2)	5	4	4	4	22	0.333333
T-4	Brooke (10-2)	5	3	2	3	18	0.296296
T-4	Stefan (5-3)	4	4	2	3	16	0.296296
6	Sam (2-3)	1	5	5	3	12	0.272727
7	Richard (4-3)	4	3	3	1	20	0.269231
T-8	Richard (8-1)	4	4	4	1	38	0.266667
T-8	Shirley (11-3)	4	4	1	1	18	0.266667
10	Dale T (8-6)	3	4	2	2	14	0.233333
11	Stephanie (4-1)	4	2	6	3	34	0.230769
T-12	Doug (12-3)	4	2	3	0	20	0.222222
T-12	Ed (7-2)	3	3	3	2	14	0.222222
T-12	Angelo (7-3)	2	4	2	2	10	0.222222
T-12	Sheldon (10-3)	2	4	4	5	8	0.222222
T-12	Lee Anne (1-4)	1	3	1	2	2	0.222222
T-17	Nicholas (11-1)	3	3	2	5	20	0.2
T-17	Mike (8-2)	2	4	2	2	10	0.2
T-19	Hung (3-1)	1	4	5	3	24	0.192308
T-19	Antonia (4-4)	1	4	6	2	14	0.192308
T-19	Casey (3-3)	2	3	2	4	4	0.192308

·         Sorting by win percentage diversifies the field a bit. Now the average contestant finish is 2.57. Instead of ten winners in the top twenty, that number drops to five with only two in the top ten.

·         Paul Qui remains in the number one spot, with an impressive 37% winning percentage.

·         Kevin Gillespie of Top Chef Las Vegas and Gregory Gourdet of Top Chef Boston tie for second place with an impressive five elimination challenge wins and four quickfires. Interestingly both chefs failed to win their seasons.

·         Under this scoring system, Blais’s performance in Top Chef Chicago moves him into 7^th place, just ahead of his winning performance in Top Chef All-Stars.

So we’ve looked at a simple points system that mirrors the rules of the show and a win percentage that tries to take a broader view. In order to reconcile these two results, let’s average them together and see where we stand.

Contestant (Season-Finish)	Points Ranking	Win Percentage Ranking	Average Ranking	Overall Finish
Paul (9-1)	1	1	1	1
Kevin (6-3)	7	2	4.5	2
Richard (8-1)	2	8	5	3
Gregory (12-2)	9	2	5.5	4
Stephanie (4-1)	3	11	7	5
Richard (4-3)	10	7	8.5	6
Brooke (10-2)	15	4	9.5	7
Stefan (5-3)	15	4	9.5	7
Doug (12-3)	10	12	11	9
Shirley (11-3)	15	8	11.5	10
Michael (6-1)	3	22	12.5	11
Nicholas (11-1)	10	17	13.5	12
Hung (3-1)	8	19	13.5	12
Kristen (10-1)	5	22	13.5	12
Dale T (8-6)	21	10	15.5	15
Sam (2-3)	26	6	16	16
Ed (7-2)	21	12	16.5	17
Nina (11-2)	10	28	19	18
Harold (1-1)	10	28	19	19
Mei (12-1)	5	34	19.5	20

·         Unsurprisingly Qui maintains the top spot and clearly ranks as the best contestant in the show’s history.

·         The top ten includes three winners: Qui, Blais, and Izard; two runners up: Gregory Gourdet and Brooke Williamson; and five third place finishers: Kevin Gillespie, Blais, Stefan Richter, Doug Adams, and Shirley Chung.

·         The results also skew heavily in favor of season four and onward. Only three chefs (Harold Dieterle, Sam Talbot and Hung Huynh) come from seasons 1-3. Seasons 12 (Boston) and 11 (New Orleans) each feature three chefs in the top twenty. Seasons four (Chicago), six (Las Vegas), eight (All-Stars), and ten (Seattle) all have two. So maybe Top Chef is like the Star Trek movies?

I’ll have at least one follow-up post detailing some of the other interesting results from this analysis, including seasons where the best chef according to the points system didn’t win, the weakest contestants in Top Chef history and more.