’24 in 24: Last Chef Standing’ Finale Live Updates: Who Wins Season 3?

Marcel and Sawyer were both very deserving winners, but I’ve been watching Lee Anne Wong cook on TV since Top Chef season 1, which was 20 years ago. The first season of that show aired from March to May 2006. She finished in fourth place and was a joy to watch. Since then, she’s been on a ton of shows, including making it to the Final Four of Tournament of Champions VI. It’s so wonderful to watch her get her first big competition win, especially after she lost everything in the Lahaina Fires in 2023.

After 24 hours of cooking, the judges really liked both dishes. Jean-George’s comments about Lee Anne’s dish made her cry. But the judges seemed to like Alex’s dish better.

The winning chef turned out to be… Lee Anne! Wow, that actually surprised me! I thought Alex had it in the bag.

Lee Anne and Alex are tasked with cooking a Michelin-worth dish with the remaining time, which is 37 minutes. Lee Anne has to use tuna because it’s all she has left. She decides to make nori and feuilles de brick wrapped tuna loin. Alex chooses to use his Iberico shoulder steak to make pork steak with carrot argan oil coulis and romesco.

Everybody’s dish looks amazing—and not just “we’ve been cooking for 22.5 hours amazing.” It looks amazing for anybody. The judges really like Alex and Lee Anne’s dishes and Christina gets a few more criticisms; ultimately, Christina is eliminated. Talk about a dark horse. Super proud of her to have made it this far.

Quote of the night: “I want to eat this alone. Without silverware. And maybe without clothing,” says Alex G. of Alex Stupak’s milanesa.

The first challenge for the final three is to cook an elevated weeknight family meal in 30 minutes. This is an elimination challenge. The dishes are as follows:

Alex cooks pork milanese.
Christina cooks grilled prawns with roasted potatoes.
Lee Anne cooks steamed hot oil sea bass.

After Alex, Jet and Jean-George judge the three dishes, they choose Lee Anne as the winner, so Viet and Joe are headed home after 22 hours of cooking. Woof. That’s really hard to watch after all of his talks about he and his wife struggling with losing their baby and wanting to do IVF.

Alex Guarnaschelli, Jet Tila, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten are on hand to judge this last cook-off before the real finals begins. The competitors are not that excited to see Jet or Alex because they judge lots of stuff, but Jean-Georges being there at 5 a.m. to judge a Food Network show is kind of a big deal.

As Viet says, “If I’m to cook for Jean-George, I want to be at my best. And now you’re going to have him judge the food we’ve done at our darkest hour? Talk about a moment of panic.”

Lee Anne does an Indian-style fish fry with her tilapia. Joe does a chicken wonton with coconut nage. Viet chooses to make chicken-fried steak bites with Vietnamese spices using his chuck roast.

They’re all trying to save their best ingredients for the future challenges because the shift is “High End” and they want their best proteins for the remaining challenges.

The next challenge is for only three chefs and Alex, as the Golden Knife holder, gets to choose which three chefs are cooking in the next challenge. The challenge is a double elimination. Only the winner advances, the other two are done. So Alex’s choice puts three chefs cooking and one chef getting to take a break with him.

Alex chooses Viet, Joe and Lee Anne. He obviously thinks Christina is the weakest competitior because obviously you would advance the one chef you think is the easiest to beat in the finals.

Lee Anne is absolutely crushing it, until they get to whipping egg whites into a meringue and Alex pulls ahead and wins. So he gets the Golden Knife and chooses pork for his protein. Each protein has three different cuts on it and that’s all they can use for protein for the rest of the competition. Viet takes second and chooses beef. Lee Anne in third takes fish. Christina in fourth gets her first choice, which was shellfish, and that lands Joe with poultry. Nobody is actually that mad about what they got.

They have to dice four onions, turn four artichokes, pit four avocadoes, tournée four potatoes, whip six eggs and squeeze lemons until they have eight ounches of lemon juice. As Lee Anne recounts as the challenge starts, Alex Stupak seems to be the most composed at this point. He’s like a robot.

The stakes are not elimination. But the winners get to grab their proteins in order of finishing. The choices are shellfish, poultry, beef, fish and pork. Also, the first person to finish gets the Golden Knife, but we don’t know the prize for that yet.

It’s the speed test and it’s combining the tests from the first two seasons: dicing onions, pitting avocados, turning artichokes, whipping egg whites, tourné-ing potatoes and squeezing lemons. Yikes. That sounds so exhausting even if you’re not 20.5 hours into a 24-hour gauntlet.

Joe’s steak comes in at 127.7 degrees, which is damn close. Avishar’s steak comes in at 117.9. Bummer for Avishar. He looks just knackered, like absolutely so discombobulated because he’s so tired.

It’s 4:41 a.m. The episode kicks off with the head-to-head battle between Joe and Avishar. Their challenge is to take a steak and a cast iron pan and get the steak to a perfect medium rare, which is 130 degrees. They cannot cut or temp the steak. They can only go on touch. That’s tough. There is a trick of putting your index finger to your thumb and various fingers equal various temps — the meat of your thumb by itself is rare, index to thumb is medium rare, middle finger to thumb is medium, ring finger to thumb is medium well and and pinky to thumb is well done.

My question is – is it like The Price is Right? Is it the closest without going over?