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" Congratulations, Paul Qui \u2014 you are Top Chef. Sarah Grueneberg \u2014 wipe those damned tears off your face. You, too, Lindsay. And, yeah, even you, Beverly. Why? Because winning Top Chef doesn&amp;#039;t matter as much as you think. I know missing out on the prize money seems like a real blow right now. $125,000 is a pretty big wad. But you should know that the sum \u2014 minus the relevant taxes \u2014 wouldn&amp;#039;t begin to cover the costs associated with opening the kind of restaurant you want, anyway. If you&amp;#039;re building your own place, the cost of fitting out a professional kitchen alone for a restaurant of moderate size can easily run upwards of $300,000. Even if you&amp;#039;re not, you&amp;#039;ll need to shell out for interior design, serviceware, a wine inventory, PR costs, and the salaries of all the people you&amp;#039;ll be hiring while you get the place off the ground (after all, cooks don&amp;#039;t start working on opening night). Oh, and then there&amp;#039;s the money that you yourself will need to live on while the whole project comes together. No matter what, you&amp;#039;ll need investors. I can&amp;#039;t think of an achievement by a Top Chef winner that runners-up and finalists haven&amp;#039;t matched or exceeded. Like the winners, they&amp;#039;re opening up their own restaurants: Tiffani Faison with Sweet Cheeks BBQ in Boston, Spike Mendelsohn&amp;#039;s Obama-approved Good Stuff Eatery and We, The Pizza in Washington, D.C., Dale Talde&amp;#039;s new and notable Brooklyn joint Talde, Mike Isabella&amp;#039;s Graffiato, and Angelo Sosa&amp;#039;s Social Eatz. Season 6 runner-up Bryan Voltaggio&amp;#039;s career has flourished in equal measure with his winning brother Michael&amp;#039;s: They both just opened sandwich shops, Lunchbox and ink.sack, on opposite coasts. Top Chef Season 3 winner Hung Huynh has a new restaurant called Catch? Fourth-place finisher Brian Malarkey has four, with a fifth on the way. Top Chef All-Stars winner Richard Blais had his own show on the Science Channel? Runner-up Carla Hall is hosting a show on network TV with Michael Symon and Mario Batali. Suddenly losing doesn&amp;#039;t seem so bad. Neither is a Top Chef victory a particular guarantee of future success. For every Stephanie Izard or Harold Dieterle, there&amp;#039;s a Hosea Rosenberg or Ilan Hall, living not so differently from the days when taking orders from Padma Lakshmi was still a mere fantasy. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong. The show is not only great entertainment but also a great platform, allowing worthy (and, sometimes, not-so-worthy) young chefs to leapfrog years of laboring in relative obscurity and get on the fast track to their career goals. But, win or no win, the gladiator fight has already done its job: exposing you to potential investors, and refashioning you and your projects into a sufficient subject of interest for bloggers, food editors, and local reviewers. So no more crying, Grueneberg. You&amp;#039;ll make out okay. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a13004/top-chef-winner-paul-qui-7012991/>