Chiefs Final! | A squid ink paste that is too dry!

Oh that wasn’t the final of Chiefs! what fans expected. The favorites tumbled, the underdogs triumphed, and the judges grimaced.

Yes, culinary classics spiced up this final episode, including Anthony’s obsession with the salamander, the pairing of black gloves and the sheeter (hello fresh pasta challenge), as well as the strong comeback of the squab, whose hazardous cooking has irritated Jean-Luc Boulay and Normand Laprise many times since 2010.

But the winner of the Radio-Canada reality show was not the big favorite, the intense and friendly Amine Laabi, but the calm and efficient Jean-Christophe Beaudin, 30, who concocted a cordon bleu menu despite a deep cut on the little finger. Cursed mandolin of the devil!

And even if he hasn’t shone as brightly as his comrades in the last ten weeks, Jean-Christophe has always been constant, attentive and meticulous.

Monday evening, this discreet technician weighed the milligram of each of his ingredients and tempered his stress, which earned him a climb to the top of the charts. Like what it is necessary to be wary of the water (Montellier) which sleeps.

Sous-chef at the Foxy restaurant in Montreal, Jean-Christophe has flown under the radar since the opening of the kitchen-workshop run by Colombe St-Pierre. Of the four finalists, he was clearly the underdog. I wrote in my last column that Jean-Christophe’s chances of winning were “as slim as a tile of parmesan cheese”, a remark that stuck in his throat, let’s say.

“It was my goal to stay as low profile as possible. I’m not a very excessive person, I’m not as flamboyant and expressive as Amine. I’m more in my bubble. My goal was not to flash on TV and I stayed true to myself. I preferred to say less to the cameras and focus on my dishes,” explains Montrealer Jean-Christophe Beaudin.

Halfway through filming the Chiefs!, the four judges served a mini warning to the participants: stop developing complicated tricks and bet on simplicity. The instruction destabilized Jean-Christophe Beaudin.

It was the third time that Jean-Christophe had signed up for the auditions for the Radio-Canada reality show. The injection was given to him by Jérôme Rouault, champion of the fourth edition of the Chiefs!with whom he briefly worked in the kitchens of the restaurant Chambre à part, rue Saint-Denis, on the Plateau Mont-Royal.

Trained at Mousso and Maison Boulud, Jean-Christophe was less fond of team events, including the famous blind challenge with headsets, aka the Tim Hortons challenge, which sent him to a duel twice. .

Unfortunately for Amine Laabi, who had won the most challenges during this 11^e strong season, he was cut first after the entry stage. What a disappointment for him and for us, who imagined him with the golden hat screwed on his head. The most important evening for Amine, 29, was his most disastrous. Has boreal cuisine made him lose his way?

Amine missed his almond tuile, and his squid ink dough was too dry. The judges were not kind to the sous-chef of the Gentile café in Westmount: blatant technical errors, no harmony in the flavors, poor cooking and lack of sauce (unforgivable at this stage, let’s see!), Amine was thanked. A defeat that the Lavallois took with elegance and humility.

A second favorite candidate of the competition, Anthony Vien, 25, also had a hard time with his loaded recipes. Anthony felled hard on his golden pear, the core of which did not thaw, which caused grimaces on the panel of judges.

Elliot Beaudoin, 27, the specialist in plating with tongs, served a succulent sablefish, but his dessert, which contained chunks of butter, sank it. The Beauceron, also seen in Heads of wood 2 on Videotron’s Vrai platform, still finished in second place.

Without wishing to ramble, this chapter of Chiefs! contained moments of anthology, including the assist-sacrifice of Adrian, which propelled Anthony in the final, as well as the heartbreaking elimination of Andersen, which drew tears to more than one viewer.

According to Numeris, the 11^e season of Chiefs! brought together 761,000 cooks in front of their stations, a rating slightly higher than that of In the eye of the dragon (757,000).

With such appetizing results, you can be sure that Radio-Canada will not go under the table for a 12^e batch.