There are many paths to get to the end of a season of Top Chef, as season 19’s final three contestants show. Buddha Lo built a resume on creativity and highly-refined techniques, constantly impressing the judges with his ingenuity. Evelyn Garcia, on the other hand, steered into the foods that formed her as a chef, elevating ingredients and flavors that were essential parts of her home city of Houston. And Sarah Welch spent a whopping six episodes out of the competition, winning her way back through Last Chance Kitchen. And after she did, she proved her second chance was warranted, making an impression with both her food and deadpan confessionals. Despite these three different paths, only one will lead to the $250,000 grand prize and the coveted title of Top Chef. Read on to hear Buddha, Evelyn, and Sarah’s thoughts on their time in the game. The Top Chef: Houston finale airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo. What has the experience been like to watch the season back?Evelyn Garcia: I get the question all the time of, “How is it watching yourself on TV?” Overall, I’m just super proud. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s me. I did that. That’s me crying on TV. (Laughs.)” I don’t care. I’ve been so proud. And it is nerve-wracking, being like, “What are the edits? How am I going to look?” But I think that the show did such a wonderful job at keeping us at our essence and really portraying us the way we are. And I think it’s just really neat to see it.Buddha Lo: It’s still very surprising to watch yourself on television. But I wouldn’t want it any other way. Because at the end of the day, we’re all on the show to cook and compete. And this is what we do every day. To be someone I’m not is a lot harder than actually just being yourself. That’s what we got to do, and I think that made our tasks a lot easier. We are just who we are. We’re just cooking. And that’s what we do for a living. No one’s asking us to do a catwalk or something. Because I’d be shockingly good at it. (Laughs.) I feel very comfortable watching it. It’s been a lot of fun watching and reliving all these fun moments.Sarah Welch: The hardest part for me is, I’m such an idiot. I like to say that over and over and over again. But I have a ton of fun watching the episodes. I only saw people when they were disheveled and decrepit after it. And you’re only getting 50% of what went down. In particular, seeing Jackson’s boot episode, I was just like, “Oh, Jesus.” It was really interesting to get the full picture after seeing the person after elimination. I’m one of the few people that got to see everyone. Plus, you have the unique comparison of being out of the eyes of people who only watch the main show for a long time.Sarah: It’s weird coming back into the show because the viewer base that’s only watching the main show just doesn’t care for you. I think more than anybody else, I’ve had a really polarizing response. No matter what happens, when you come back from Last Chance Kitchen, you’re replacing somebody really talented in the end stages of a really challenging experience. And Buddha was one of the few people that made me feel like I deserved to be there. Every time we’re in a room, he’s like, “She won Last Chance!” People online don’t care; they’re mad you kicked off their favorite person. Just hate you intrinsically. So it’s been mixed. But generally, the Michigan squad is so thick and so excited. I’m like the new Michigan Wolverine! (Laughs.) The Lions were never good; we don’t mind rooting for garbage. So I’ve been a pleasant surprise, I think. What compelled you all to apply for Top Chef in the first place?Buddha: I was watching Top Chef in regional Australia with my brother after high school. I already wanted to pursue a career in cooking. So I’ve been watching it for a very long time. My first season was watching the Voltaggio brothers, and I haven’t stopped since. I really do enjoy watching it. But I also always wanted to do a cooking competition on television. If you grow up loving food and are obsessed with it, just like all of us, we all want to try and do different things. Maybe go travel and go stage somewhere, or work on a farm, do all these exciting things that revolve around food. And one of them for me was to do a cooking competition, and there was no other better cooking competition to do than Top Chef. I think it’s the one that really highlights what’s necessary and important to the industry right now. It matches the same values that I have. So I love being on it.Evelyn: I’ve been a fan of the show as well for a while. I actually worked for Harold Dieterle, who was the OG Top Chef. I was coming in from a place where I had closed my first concept. I was just putting my head down, working, working, working. We’re making it through COVID; I had to pivot 1000 times. And then when Top Chef reached out, it was amazing. I mean, it was something I didn’t even have in mind. Initially, I’m like, “Hell yeah, I would love to do it!” But at the time, I was just so busy, having my head down and working on my business and making sure that we would survive. So when Top Chef came about, I sat on it for like a week, thinking, “This is what I want to do. Am I prepared?” And at the same time, I was going through negotiations with my space. I have a restaurant coming this fall. And it just worked out so perfectly. I didn’t know it was going to be shot in Houston. So God was watching over me! But I really wondered, “Am I capable of doing this?” It’s a completely different way of how I cook. I don’t have that mentality of timing things. But I do own my own business. And I do have to roll with the punches constantly. And I’m dealing with 1000 things all at once. That made me realize I’m capable of doing this. So I gave it a shot.Sarah: I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had, um, and I got let go of a job four or five years ago. And James Rigato, who was on an earlier season of Top Chef. He actually called me and was like, “You’re gonna be okay.” And I was really shocked at the kindness. And he was like, “They’re doing like an open call at my restaurant. You don’t have a job anymore. So you might as well come.” And so I went. And they ended up thinking that I was just too young at the time. And then they ended up reaching back out this year when I had just opened two restaurants that survived a pandemic and was on contract to open a third restaurant. So the timing was like not great. I was going from being unemployed and needing something to do to being hyper-employed and owning businesses. But I had a really great team in place. My fiance is a chef. So he ended up opening the restaurant that I was on contract to open. But I had watched it a long, long time ago. And then life got in the way, and I stopped watching it. When James brought it up for me, I wondered if I could truly do it. It’s very rarely backed up with any sort of true belief that you’ll get selected to do it. So you’re like, “Yeah, I could do it. Sure”. And then they call you, and you’re like, “Oh [expletive], can I do it?” I think things just aligned for me to be able to do it. My goals were very short-term for the whole thing. Don’t be the first eliminated was my first goal. Trying to beat James was my second goal. (Laughs.) But I didn’t have a dream of going on the show. It just kind of presented itself to me. Outside of the finale, what was the highest point for you in the competition?Sarah: Mine, hands down, was winning in front of Daniel Boulud. And getting that Padma checkmark. You can kind of tell if she’s not keen on you. And she’s not keen on you for personal reasons. She’s not keen on you because you’re not performing. You’re not doing what you came there to do. And so finally making a dish that she stood behind, that was a high point of proving to the remaining competitors that I wasn’t a joke. And then kind of proving to the judges that they hadn’t made a poor step in having me come back into the competition.Buddha: My highest achievement was Restaurant Wars. I really enjoyed it because it just really highlighted a lot of the skills. Not just cooking, but the front-of-house people management, and also the social skills to try and talk to a team and convince them to do different things without overtaking, overstepping, or being too bossy. Managing is what I do. And it’s nice to be in a setting just to step back and go, “Can you open up a restaurant? Can you make it successful? Can you train people? Can you also do front of house?” That was a very successful night.Evelyn: I think I have a lot! I mean, cooking barbecue for a bunch of pitmasters that I know and work with was pretty amazing. A dish for Selena, who I grew up loving and idolizing, was amazing. Having my dad on the show was just crazy. I think the whole experience was very exciting. But I guess, because it’s so recent, I’ll say the nopales challenge. It was really amazing to be able to showcase an ingredient that I grew up eating. That was really amazing for me to work with ingredients that were just so humble, and then elevate that and show them in a different way, yet still have it really connect with my dish in a very personal way. And I think that was my overall goal with the competition. On the other hand, what was your lowest point in the competition?Buddha: Being on the bottom really hurts. I got in the bottom quite early. I think it was the Asian night market. And I was pretty confident in that dish. But I think it was the kick in the ass that I needed. Don’t get comfortable here. You have to bring your A-game every single time. Being on the bottom or eliminated is the hardest thing. When you’re eliminated, you’re gone, and you’re going to have to deal with it, and that sucks. But when you’re on the bottom, you know that you have to go into another cook very soon. And how do you bounce back from it? Especially when you’ve got all this self-doubt questioning your capabilities. It can be very hard to come back from that. You can either dig yourself out of it, or it’s going to just keep hurting you. We don’t have many shoulders to cry on.Evelyn: I mean…doppelgangers. I think that was definitely a cook that I was coming into in a place of fear. Just being like, “I don’t cook like this. This is not what I’m used to.” But obviously, that’s what the competition is for, trying to push you out of your comfort zone. Try to do things that you’re not comfortable with at all. And then once I survived, I was just like, “Okay, I need to not be in that mentality to keep going in this competition. You need to never think like that again.” I was so out of sorts and feeling uncomfortable, and then let that overshadow my whole dish and how that went about.Sarah: That sucked for me too. But I got to go out with Robert. Everybody else gets eliminated alone and has to do all this introspection and has a really kind of solitary experience. But Robert and I at least went through it together. For me, finishing in the bottom the first time was actually the only time I ever cried during the competition. I mean, I cried with my fiance on the phone, because he just makes me cry. But I would have to say in Last Chance Kitchen when I beat Jae, and then these guys made me cook against her again. I went out in the hallway and cried, and everybody was like, “Grow up.” I had a very similar experience with Ashleigh, and my win didn’t actually mean that much. I was scared cooking against Jae. I had won an advantage, but it wasn’t an advantage I needed. I didn’t need more time. I’d been cooking for 30 minutes the whole time. I had to cook against another person for a second time. And last time, that didn’t go well for me. And so, for me, the attitude that I had at that moment was rock-bottom of feeling like the sweep I had against Jae didn’t really mean that much. I felt like I was set up to fail, or I couldn’t beat the game. Though I had to do well multiple times, they only needed to do well once. Which competitor do you wish most was alongside you three in the finale?Evelyn: I’d say Jackson. Maybe halfway through, there was definitely a feeling of, “The finale will be me, Buddha, and Jackson.” So he’d be my pick.Buddha: Jackson. I really, I really enjoyed eating his food whenever he cooked it. I was almost his personal taste tester without even knowing that he had no sense of taste or smell. But I would have liked to see what he brought out for the finale.Sarah: I mean, I won’t say Jackson because that’s just boring. (Laughs.) I want to see what Leia would have done with this competition. I saw her cooking in Last Chance, and she was doing really well. She was sick during the competition; she went to the hospital. She was in an immense amount of pain. And then she came back from the hospital and started just slaughtering people in Last Chance. If she had been given another chance, I think Leia would have been a competitor for sure. Next, check out our interview with Damarr Brown, who was eliminated in Top Chef Houston Episode 13.
