Dale Talde was on Top Chef twice (Seasons 4 and 8), opened TALDE restaurants in Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Miami, watched them all close, and reopened with Goosefeather in Tarrytown and Tigress in Naples. He is one of the more openly Asian-American chefs of his generation, in the sense that he has spent his career arguing — out loud, in interviews — that Filipino-Chinese-American food does not need to apologize for itself.
He beat Bobby with wonton soup. Soup, again. Talde's wontons had pork that had been velveted — marinated in cornstarch and soy and a little baking soda — before being folded into the skin. Bobby's pork was raw-into-wrapper. Velveted pork is silky. Raw pork is just cooked pork. The judges felt the difference in the chew.