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Chef Laurence Louie is a Chinese-American chef from Boston, who came into the show cooking Turkish food, but pivoted early on to the Cantonese cuisine of his childhood, spent in his mother’s bakery, where at nights she was the keyboard player/multi-instrumentalist for a Chinese rock band. He’s also a former college basketball player who loves Warhammer, has a master’s degree in Asian-American studies, and never went to culinary school.

People have argued — well, me, mainly — that as the caliber of chefs competing on Top Chef has gone up, the resumes have gotten standardized; the personalities homogenizing a bit in kind, which can detract from the messy, scruffy reality show charm of the show’s early days. As my Top Chef podcast co-host Joey Devine wondered, “has Top Chef reached peak James Beard?”

In a lot of ways, Chef Laurence refuted this premise, a compelling character who was eccentric and different, interesting without performing some reality show shtick and relatable in his multi-facetedness (not to mention candor and general likability). This even as he arrived with basically the same resume bullet points that all Top Chef aspirants have now: a James Beard Nomination for Best Chef of the Northeast, one of Bon Appetit’s Best New Restaurants (2023). The latter was for Rubato, the Hong Kong-style cafe he opened on the site of his mother’s bakery, after moving home from London where he had been the head chef at Oklava (hence the background in Turkish food).

It’s no secret if you read my Top Chef Power Rankings all season, I was in the tank for Laurence early on (I see now that I really whiffed on “Mr. Rubato” as a nickname). I had him handicapped number one starting in week three and continuing on basically all the way on through to the finale when he lost a closely fought battle to Rhoda Magbitang (alongside fellow finalist Sherry Cardoso).

But I don’t think I’m just defending my rankings when I say that this season’s competition felt incredibly close. I have to imagine that most viewers will come away remembering Laurence and Sherry’s food almost as much as they will Rhoda’s win (deserved, as far as I could tell). Which doesn’t always happen; a lot of times people only remember the winner.

Chef Laurence had a rare combination of great-looking food that seemed professionally executed but not cheffy or fussy. Meanwhile he came off genuine, and capable of telling his own story in a way that felt both vulnerable and natural. He might be the first chef to make me cry during a Top Chef episode (for which I will never forgive him).

He lost out on the $250,000 prize in the end, but the cash prize is only one part of the reason that chefs choose to compete on the show. The other parts being: the visibility, the chance to prove themselves, the opportunity to level up their careers, to make their style of food part of the conversation. In all those other areas Laurence’s run on the show feels like a big win.

At the same time, coming off a great run on the show feels like the most intense part of many of these chefs’ professional lives: with the palpable sense that you have to make all the best career decisions NOW, while your professional profile is possibly at the highest it’s ever going to be.

I got to talk to Laurence this week, to pick his brain about this complex mix of feelings — of having the pressure to make all the right decisions at the possible pinnacle of your career, of having to relive and talk through the scene of your great professional disappointment months later, probably just about the time when you’ve finally managed to stop dwelling on it yourself.

These chefs remind me a little of the memoirist, who finishes writing a book and then 18 months later has to promote it, essentially having to play publicist for a version of themselves that they no longer are. Or maybe that’s overly dramatic. Anyway, I got to ask Laurence about Turkish food and why he screwed up that duck.