When Lindsay Autry began her first day on Top Chef: Texas, she was surprised to see how many of her fellow chefs made it through the audition process—they hadn’t. Lindsay then learned all 28 of them would compete on-air until 16 actual contestants were left standing. “Just put your head down and cook,” the North Carolina native told herself. She would then focus on just making it to the top 10, then the top 8, the final 5, and then on to the finals. “I definitely exceeded my expectations,” Lindsay told me on the phone this morning. The executive chef of Omphoy Ocean Resort and Michelle Bernstein’s restaurant in Palm Beach, Fla., made it to the final three.

“I kind of knew it would come down to me or Sarah [Grueneberg] versus Paul [Qui],” she said. The competition was a fire-and-ice theme—but do you do hot versus cold or hot-spicy versus cold-mild or cold-spicy versus hot-mild? The challenge was definitely subject to intepretation. And at this stage of the game, it came down not only to interpretation but also the minor details. Even head judge Tom Colicchio admitted on his blog that Lindsay’s dish “would never have sent her and her knives packing.” He went on to explain,