Venison Wellington is a dish from another century. Beef Wellington is from a different century than that. The technique — a seared loin wrapped in mushroom duxelles wrapped in prosciutto wrapped in puff pastry, baked until the pastry shatters and the meat is rosy — is a 1960s dinner-party trick that requires the kind of patience nobody admits to anymore.
Sylvain Delpique admits to it. He came up through the French old guard, ran the kitchen at The Carlyle and the '21' Club in Manhattan when those rooms still mattered, and now sits within the Mandarin Oriental orbit. The man can build a duxelles in his sleep.
He swapped beef for venison — leaner, gamier, less forgiving — and Bobby brought a meat dish that was, per the broadcast, just a meat dish. A Wellington is architecture. A steak is a steak. The judges scored the architecture.