Top Chef Finalists On Padma Lakshmi's Exit And More Behind-The-Scenes Secrets - Exclusive Interview

The time is here: "Top Chef: World All-Stars" is about to air the finale and crown Buddha Lo, Sara Bradley, or Gabriel Rodriguez as the champion. The competition has had many twists and turns, from Sara's thrilling comeback on "Last Chance Kitchen" to Gabri's many brushes with elimination. Which chef will take home the $250,000 grand prize (and the moral victory from beating so many other All-Stars)? The three finalists already know, but they aren't telling until the last episode airs.

Fortunately for us, the top three contestants are able to share plenty of other stories from this season of "Top Chef." Mashed sat down for an exclusive interview with Bradley and Lo to talk about their journeys this season, their reactions to Padma Lakshmi leaving the show, and their favorite off-camera moments. We weren't able to talk to Rodriguez during the initial interview, but he answered some of our questions via email, and you can read his responses at the end.

Buddha, you're competing in back-to-back seasons, which sounds exhausting. Do you think there's an advantage or a disadvantage from going back-to-back like that?

Buddha Lo: There's definitely both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that you've done it before and you came fresh off last season, but at the same time, going back-to-back, you have not really [had] any time to regrow your repertoire. Even now, in the last year, my repertoire's grown a little bit bigger. I've tried different techniques and stuff like that. But I'm literally coming into Season 20 with a Season 19 mentality and the same set of skills.

There are things that I did not use on "Top Chef" this season because I did it last season. For example, Parker House rolls — I can't do that anymore. I can't do a pavlova. It's not that you couldn't; I just felt for myself, I wanted to do new things, push myself to the boundary, and keep coming up with different things. That's the way I wanted to go about it.

There are some serious advantages and disadvantages. Talking to people from previous seasons or other versions of "Top Chef" that were on the show, they're like, "We'll 100% do dishes that we won challenges with on our season. But Padma [Lakshmi], Tom [Colicchio], and Gail [Simmons] haven't seen that or tasted that before." That becomes their advantage as well.

What's been different about competing against All-Stars compared to the original seasons you were on?

Bradley: The fact that everybody had done it before. The first time you do it, everyone's a little gun-shy. You never know what's going to happen, or even, you don't know how things are going to play out. But since we'd all done it before, we had some expectations — and since we had all made it so far before, that was a motivator to not go home.

On your original season, you don't want to be the first one that goes home, and then you keep pushing forward. But on this one, you knew what it was to either be super close or to win. Everyone was significantly more motivated this time around.

Lo: This time around was really intimidating. It was being in that group of people and knowing that you have to bring your A-game because there's going to be challenges where everyone pulls something out of the bag and a good dish is still going to go home. That's not usually the case in normal seasons; you can coast on the fact that maybe someone does worse than you. But there were definitely challenges where you think, "This caliber's so high." Even with the first Quickfire challenge, everyone was so good, and you go, "Wow, this is going to be incredible."

Like Sara said, everyone's so talented, and everyone's made it to the finale. It's the fact that it's only finalists and winners. In most "All-Stars," that includes people that probably should have made it further.

On my season, Jackson will probably get invited to "All-Stars," considering his story was that he got eliminated from "Restaurant Wars" as a front-of-house person. It's a very tough competition to get into. Walking into it, I was very interested to see how all the different Top Chefs around the world would take on these challenges and see if the competition was very familiar with them. Looking back at it, I can see why France didn't make it that far, because their system is not anywhere close to what the U.S. system's like.

Lo: Like Sara said, it's definitely the challenge that almost sends you home or that sends you home that you always think back to. If you get sent home on a good dish and you had a good day, that's amazing. You can walk out with your head high. But mine was definitely the thali challenge where I messed up the rice. I probably had four challenges within both seasons where I had to cook rice for massive amounts of people, and I always cooked it properly. For this Indian challenge, I stumbled, and that kept on rolling. Within two minutes of finding out that my rice on the bottom was not good, I'm getting frazzled, so I missed the curry on Padma's dish as well.

It was very difficult, and it was a gut-wrenching moment. You think to yourself, "This could be it. This is the sort of thing that all good chefs can get sent home on." I'm not 100% happy with the dish. As a golden rule, if I can look at a dish that I send out, and if it's 100% and I'm happy to go home on that, then I'm going to be happy leaving. But if it's something so basic like rice and you stuff it up and you go home for that, you're going to have to live with that for a very, very long time. That's probably worse than leaving home on a good dish.

You have alluded to a couple of these already, but do you have any memorable moments that didn't make it onto the show that stick with you now that you're done filming?

Bradley: Always lots of them. A really memorable moment was ... It was Buddha, Gabri, and I. It was after we were in the top three, and we got back and it was super late. We'd been on the boat all day, and we told our handlers we wanted sushi. We got on and we picked this Michelin-starred sushi restaurant and had a spread of enough sushi to feed probably 15, 20 people. We sat around, drank champagne, ate sushi, and could look out the window and see the Eiffel Tower. It was sparkling. It was an amazing moment there with those guys. I felt good and ate a ridiculous amount of sushi.

Lo: There are a lot of memorable things that happen after the challenges — getting to know everyone, especially going to everyone's rooms and having a couple of drinks in our hotel rooms and talking and getting to know everyone.

But there were also a lot of special moments when we were able to go out and enjoy London. We decompressed, going to the London Eye and seeing bits of London and not thinking about the competition because, at the end of the day, everyone is in competition mode. But once you catch us in the slight moment where we're not, it's almost like we're all friends catching up with a beer. Everyone's had this journey before, and that's what's so special about it. Everyone's been through the "Top Chef" realm, and they've gone through that journey. We can all relate and talk to each other and find out so many different things. It's finding all these good friends who come together at once that you've never met before.