Pack Your Knives

The sixth segment of a six-part Savor Charlotte series presented by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Tom Haberstroh is joined by Andres Kaifer, who is the partner and executive chef of CustomShop, a Michelin-recommended restaurant in Charlotte as well as the new Charlotte wine bar called Emmy Lou’s. When word got out that Charlotte was hosting Top Chef, the first name that popped into my...

It’s the final episode of Track Your Knives for Season 23! In this episode, we finally get to announce the winner of the power rankings, who will be heading to Paducah for dinner at Freight House with Sara Bradley! Carly and Kendra also revisit GOAT status and break out how well everyone ranked the final 3. Lastly, we congratulate the fantasy league winners and wrap up with an appreciation for thi...

The fifth segment of a six-part Savor Charlotte series presented by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Tom Haberstroh is joined by Justin Hazelton, a groundbreaking mixologist from Charlotte whose bar was listed on Esquire’s Top 15 bars in AMERICA. It’s called Lorem Ipsum, and it’s known as the first listening bar in Charlotte. Justin was born and raised in Charlotte by parents who worked...

We have a winner! Tom and Sara help crown the Top Chef Carolinas champ with a series of stats and anecdotes from the finale. As a mentor to one of the finale contestants and a dining guest at the final table, Sara shares her thoughts on each of the 12 dishes that she ate at the finale. Tom digs into the numbers on the Top Chef winner and the surprising data on the Dessert or No Dessert debate in t...

This week, we start off by comparing this final four chefs to other seasons and look at the association between gender ratio at final four with the gender of past seasons' winners. One of Carly and Kendra's leagues drafted the final four chefs in the first five chefs drafted - and the other, well, not so much. The power rankings have become a nail biter, with only one point separating the first an...

After Sara introduces Tom to the concept of a coupe, the two step up to the plate and take a swing at the penultimate episode of Top Chef Carolinas. Tom H and Sara enjoy the Tom C 20 Questions game and think it should remain a Top Chef staple, but Tom H has some questions for Sara. Starting with: How in the world did you draft so well? Tom and Sara agree that they should tinker with the scoring sy...

Track Your Knives, the companion podcast to Pack Your Knives, brings you results of the community's power rankings, fantasy leagues highlights, and data-driven insights. This week, Carly and Kendra discuss how they appreciate the Asheville highlight and Ashleigh Shanti's commentary, plus whether restricting access to ingredients is an advantage. We have a battle at the top of the Power Rankings bo...

The fourth segment of a six-part Savor Charlotte series presented by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Tom Haberstroh is joined by Chayil Johnson, who you might recognize from his appearance as a guest judge in the season premiere episode of Top Chef Season 23 Carolinas. He’s the executive chef of Community Matters Cafe in Charlotte and a James Beard nominee for Best Chef Southeast. Chayi...

Look at those stares … Tom and Sara recap an episode that presented a wonderful ode to Asheville, NC., and ended with an all-time crashout. It’s time to get out our rule sheet and make a ruling on what happened. Sara shares some intel about what may have gone down and the words that were said — allegedly. Tom and Sara try to get to the bottom of the eliminated chefs gripes and propose an alternate...

Track Your Knives, the companion podcast to Pack Your Knives, brings you results of the community's power rankings, highlights from fantasy leagues, and data-driven insights and oddities. This week, Carly and Kendra start off by talking about which chef has entered GOAT territory, debating whether duos are truly dangerous, and how uncommon it is to have a Quickfire with a shopping budget. Leaders...

In this recap, Tom tries not to get salty about the elimination, but he gets peppered with shame anyway. Speaking of salt and pepper, Tom and Sara debate the best duo in the culinary world in an episode full of poor pairings. Sara explains all the ins-and-outs of rabbit cooking while they both wonder who the mystery judges were and why they were presented that way. Sara and Tom discuss whether the...

In this week's Track Your Knives, Carly and Kendra rave about a return to the previous pace of a Top Chef episode. Carly gives a history lesson on mise en place relays before they get into the nitty gritty of power rankings. What happened to players' scores? We see a new entrant into the Top Ten! And then in their review of Fantasy Leagues, we lament Tom's draft while lauding Sara's. As always, li...

In one of the best episodes of the season, we got a mise en place race AND boats. Mise en place and boats. THAT’S WHAT TOP CHEF DOES. Tom and Sara take some time to bid farewell to a beloved chef and give some flowers to a fan favorite. Tom and Sara has out the proper pronunciation of pecan, and Sara reveals a personally devastating story about a salamander. If you love cooking tips, you’re going...

This week’s Track Your Knives discusses our go to dinner party dishes and how we felt about the Quickfire into Elimination challenge sequence. Carly took a swing in the power rankings that unfortunately didn’t pay off, while two-thirds of power rankers correctly ranked the winner and eliminated chef in their top 3 and bottom 3 rankings. We then chat about the top fantasy league teams by chef count...

The third segment of a six-part Savor Charlotte series presented by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Tom Haberstroh is joined by Charlotte’s own Brittany Cochran who competed on Top Chef Season 23 Carolinas. She’s the executive chef of Stagioni in Myers Park in Charlotte and the only Charlotte “hometown” contestant this season.  Brittany shares what it was like to be the Queen City repre...

After debating the crown of condiments, Tom and Sara break down the show’s first episode in Greenville, SC and explain how Last Chance Kitchen production goes down. Though they are facing each other in fantasy, they are both Team Mayo (particularly Duke’s Mayonnaise). With the LCK winner back in the competition, Tom and Sara wonders if the right chef was eliminated. When it comes to draft etiquett...

This week’s Track Your Knives starts out with a deep dive of Restaurant Wars analysis. With 23 seasons now, there’s plenty of data to break down! In the land of Power Rankings, Carly and four other players kick butt by correctly placing the elimination chef as the most likely to be eliminated. Kendra is still ahead of Carly, but Carly’s coming for her! While no one got a perfect score, we call out...

A loaded recap episode this week tackles all the happenings on Top Chef’s iconic Restaurant Wars episode with a special boots-on-the-ground report from Tom, who attended as a takeout guest. Sara and Tom break it all down and rehash Sara’s Restaurant Wars history and whether she’d prefer to be dine-in or takeout. Sara disagrees with the choice of which chef went home while Tom questions the kitchen...

We're back for episode seven of Track Your Knives, the data-driven Top Chef companion podcast brought to you by Pack Your Knives. This week Carly analyzed how often desserts land chefs in the top or bottom of elimination challenges and we hypothesized on what will happen next week during Restaurant Wars. Will there only be 7 chefs or will we see a surprise return? As always, enter your scores each...

The second segment of a six-part Savor Charlotte series presented by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Tom Haberstroh is joined by Callan Buckles, Executive Chef at Rada, which was named to the New York Times' most recent 50 Best Restaurants in America, to share his journey and why he chose to relocate to Charlotte from NYC. Subscribe to the PYK Substack!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.packyourkniv...

Tom and Sara get caught up in the web of mysteries following the events of Episode 7 and Last Chance Kitchen. With Restaurant Wars around the corner and some uncertainty floating in the air, there are a lot of questions left unanswered. Tom and Sara try to make sense of it all. Step aside Top Chef and Top Scallop. Welcome to Top Sabayon. Tom wonders why every dish has sabayon this season and Sara...

It was BBQ week at Top Chef! This week we debate western vs. eastern Carolina BBQ (seriously, who hates ketchup?), what we thought of the s'mores challenge and a discussion on how to score it, and dove into how well people's power rankings did this week. As always, enter your scores each week before the episode airs on find-topchef.com and become a subscriber on packyourknives.com to get additiona...

The highly-anticipated Carolina barbecue episode is here. And we have thoughts. Sara shares her barbecue experiences in food competition venues and Tom gives his scouting report on the various bbq joints (did you know you can get burnt ends at the Charlotte airport?). Was this the best episode to date? Tom thinks so. Why is immunity not a central talking point this season? Sara wonders. They debat...

What a week! Turn around now and watch Episode 5 if you haven't already - because wow, do we have feelings about this episode! From the Quickfire format to the Elimination challenge results, Kendra and Carly dive into how well (or shall we say, poorly?) people's power rankings did this week. We also talk about a scoring fix on the bonus questions, and give a shout out to the first player to get th...

On this shocking episode, Team Tom survives the US Whitewater Center rapids while Team Sara capsizes into the rough waters. Tom and Sara break down what went wrong for the elminated chef, and take stock in the points standings. Has a new favorite emerged? Find out what Sara thinks is “f—ed up” in this episode (and Tom can’t disagree). An old Top Chef debate surfaces about the extent to which chefs...