I know, I know, the series finale was filmed months ago and there’s nothing actual real about reality TV, but I’ve been awaiting the last competition of Bravo’s Top Chef with bated tastebuds.

It’s down to the last two culinary contestants, and even though arch-enemies Marcel Vigneron and Ilan Hall have both shown themselves to be talented, childish young men who can both wield a mean knife, it’s more about drama than dish by now.

I’ve always been a fan of Ilan, the swaggering NuYorcian kid with the Hebrew name, in spite of the nauseating liver dipped in chocolate fiasco. Even after last week’s playground tactic of offering up his head-shaving partner Ilia as a sacrificial lamb to accuse Marcel of cheating, I still prefer him over the bouffant-headed, socially-inept, staggeringly clueless Marcel.

Anthony Bourdain (just read the new book — delicious) calls Ilan a “manipulative, conspiratorial, vindictive, weasely little shit,” but adds those are “[h]ardly impediments to a career as a chef.”

Yup, we’re rooting for Ilan over here in Yenta kitchen (where the newly unemployed El Yenta Man will be preparing a fricassé of frozen burritos and with carrot stick garnish) though the much more powerful snarkers at Best Week Ever wholly disagree.

Of course, it might just be easier on the digestive system to just read the spoilers boiling up all over the Web — I think I’ve already aligned myself with the winner.