"Very little Indian flavor" — Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio brutally criticizes Vinny and Lana's dish

Top Chef season 22 released episode 5, titled Line Cook for a Day, on April 10, 2025. It saw the chefs get split into teams of two for a cuisine-based elimination challenge. Tasked with serving 150 diners at The Bentway, Vinny and Lana prepared an Indian cuisine-inspired dish with chicken and flatbread as its main components. However, it failed to wow the judges. Tom Colicchio said:

"Vinny and Lana, there was just very little Indian flavor in that dish. And I think that they got to wrapped up in the story and so wrapped up in hollandaise and chicken that they forgot that this was a major part of the challenge."

Co-panelist, Gail Simmons, expressed a similar sentiment, calling out Vinny for being too focused on delivering a story through the dish instead of prioritizing its flavor components. She claimed she did not know who Vinny was. Guest judge Sara Bradley added that Vinny needed to showcase more of his personality rather than focusing on recreating dishes of his mentors.

The panelists were unimpressed with Vinny and Lana's decision to cover the chicken with a hollandaise sauce when it was already heavily flavored. They believed it diluted the taste of the overall dish and lacked the punch that usually stands out in any Indian dish. Consequently, they sent Vinny and Lana to the bottom two, where they faced the risk of getting eliminated.

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Top Chef stars Vinny and Lana's chicken hollandaise dish fails to impress the judges

Before starting the challenge, the chefs headed to an Indian restaurant called Dil Se, where they spent the day serving guests and drawing inspiration from the food served there. While speaking to the cameras, both Vinny and Lana confessed that they were unfamiliar with Indian cuisine. However, they knew it was spice-heavy and flavorful.

At the restaurant, the Top Chef contestants tasted a special dish called chicken kamasutra. Vinny and Lana decided to take inspiration from it and create their own version. Vinny suggested that they use thigh meat and serve it with a hollandaise sauce, a preparation that he enjoyed at the Nomad, his previous restaurant.

Although Lana struggled to envision it, she agreed to go with it. After shopping for their ingredients, they began prepping for the main event. While Lana prepared the flatbread dough, Vinny worked on the chicken.

"We are making chicken thighs with curry hollandaise and flatbread," Lana said.

Although Vinny wanted to prepare a hollandaise curry, he was unsure if a spiced version of it would taste as well as he anticipated. Soon after, the Top Chef contestants arrived at The Bentway, where Vinny and Lana started cooking the meat and the flatbread. Lana tried the hollandaise and liked its "mild" taste, hoping to impress the judges.

While explaining their dish to the Top Chef judges, Vinny said:

"So we have chicken thighs cooked down in a base of a cashew sauce and a caramelized onion and tomato sauce, and then a curry hollandaise. This is my homage in this dish to my past working at the Nomad."

Lana added that she topped the dish with sunflowers because she liked working with edible flowers. Sara praised the taste of the chicken skin. Gail said her chicken was cooked well but lacked the "heat." Tom expressed a similar sentiment, noting that he expected more from an Indian dish.

Sara noted that the "not super flavorful" curried hollandaise failed to pack as much of a punch as they expected it to.

"I don't know why you need a rich hollandaise when you have a rich sauce. What's the point of it?" Top Chef judge Tom wondered.

Consequently, Lana and Vinny landed in the bottom two alongside Corwin and Kat. However, they survived the elimination and were asked to step up their game.

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Top Chef airs new episodes every Thursday at 8 pm ET exclusively on Bravo.