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Bludorn was featured on Top Chef Houston episode 12.

From left: Evelyn Garcia, Tom Colicchio, Nick Wallace, Damarr Brown, Sarah Welch and Buddha Lo on Top Chef Houston episode 12

I wish you could have seen my jaw drop at the tail end of Top Chef Houston last night, when Padma announced the show would be leaving our city to stage the two finale episodes in…Tucson?

I thought it was supposed to be Top Chef HOUSTON.

And yeah, Tucson is one of only two American burgs with the grand Unesco designation of “Creative City of Gastronomy,” but the other one is San Antonio, for pity’s sake. Couldn’t they have at least stayed in Texas?

Well, at least our last hurrah on this season had plenty of Gulf Coast color. The bounding main; the blue of ocean and sky; huge bull redfish flopping and fighting; a boat captain wearing a yard-long pirate pigtail. We saw a pelican, a big ol’ heron and a funky Galveston fish mart — Katie’s — that looked like somewhere I’d like to hang out.

There was fish-scaling and fish gutting and an Elimination Challenge dinner at chef Aaron Bludorn’s restaurant, Bludorn, with a guest-judge appearance by Bludorn’s old mentor and employer, the august Daniel Boulud. Although that relationship was only hinted at, without so much as a caption to clue people in.

Dawn Burrell returned to guest judge, looking chic in big triangular earrings and a little black dress. Padma and Gail showed plenty of cleavage, which I am beginning to suspect is part of their contract.

At the end, there was an out-of-nowhere triumph and, for this viewer, a big dash of heartbreak.

In between, there was a seriocomic fishing expedition that made dramatic use of portentous captions like “90 minutes later“ and “Three hours later.” The catch, and I use that word advisedly, was that they’d use their catch to make two dishes for seven diners the next day; and that their total budget was $200, so every “free” fish counted.

Tom looked right at home shepherding the five remaining chefs, with their varying levels of fishing experience. Damarr confessed that the closest he’d come in Chicago was “cracking open a fire hydrant.” Mississippian Nick talked like a man who knew his fish. Evelyn seemed nervous, Sarah downright miserable, and Buddha bragged a little, as Buddha will, about the fishing he had done Down Under.

It took all day, but everybody eventually ended up landing preposterously big bull redfish, a category that kicks in when the red is over 26 inches in length. But first they angled for gafftop catfish. “I don’t really like catfish,” admitted Evelyn, so of course she was the only chef who landed one. It was hefty, and its broad grey head sprouted long fat whiskers.

I was obscurely satisfied when neophyte Damarr landed the first big red, 37.5 inches long. He could basically quit for the day. Then Nick pulled in a 39-incher, and showed his Southern-guy savvy by observing that “a bull red gets a lil’ gamey, maybe a lil’ chewy, but I’ll take it. I need it.”

Finally, near dusk, the unlucky Sarah got lucky with a fighting 29-inch red. Which meant chefs and fish could repair to Katie’s Seafood, where scaling and gutting and butchering took place amid shimmery piles of ice and picturesque blotches of wall rust. A white-bearded gentleman named Buddy (what else?) helped Sarah out with her butchering technique. “I go around the ribcage.”

Our crew limped into their fancy Houston condo digs that night. I could almost feel their aches and pains and general exhaustion from being out on the water all day. “Dad took us out,” observed Buddha, the day’s funniest insight.

I know Buddha’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but he amuses me; and beneath the bravado runs a current of sweetness. I’ve heard people bemoan the very real possibility that he’ll win this thing, but I’d be fine with that.

During next morning’s ritual Whole Foods visit, I noted a pumpkin display and remembered that the season was shot last fall, when Delta was in play. It seems so long ago, as if time has distorted.

Next came a lot of frantic prepping in Bludorn’s spacious, handsome kitchen, all gleaming chrome and white tile.

“I feel dead inside,” quipped Sarah. “Every time I touch something, I’m like, Daniel effing Boulud.” I was intrigued by her idea for a “pseudo crudo” of Gulf snapper she’d bought at Katie’s, with silken tofu and kraut broth. But I thought her second dish, in which she aimed to turn smoked redfish into a pastrami sandwich homage, sounded terrible. Everything in me silently screamed, “Don’t do it!”

Evelyn pressed tortillas for a redfish al pastor taco and souped up a chipotle broth for caldo de pescado with that despised catfish she’d caught. It all sounded fine to me.

Buddha labored over highly detailed concepts involving brining and steaming his seaweed-wrapped redfish to serve with a shrimp stuffing and pickles; and conjuring a spiralized potato jacket for a take on fish and chips. Uh-oh, the potato spirals refused to cooperate. Pivot time.

Nick was making corn tortillas again, since it had worked so well for him at the Freedmen’s Town fundraiser. They would cradle a taco featuring fried redfish. The seared bull snapper would go into a fish cake with lemony buerre blanc.

Damarr decided to go Asianesque, outside his comfort zone, to show some range. Uh-oh, I thought, as he fiddled with peanut and coconut vinaigrettes for his two dishes.

Then it was showtime at a glossy, dark wooden table perpendicular to Bludorn’s kitchen pass. Stephanie Izard, the Top Chef Chicago winner, had parachuted in for the evening, her hair in ringlets; and Aaron Bludorn looked sharp in a tailored jacket. “Very handsome restaurant you have here,” Tom told him. I would rather have heard a sentence or two about it, or the historic Antone's building, or Bludorn's connection to Boulud, but whatever.

Then came the food, and the kind of stringent criticisms that seemed appropriate for this stage of the competition. Buddha’s complex, beautiful plates received a round of acclaim, even from the dreaded God Boulud. “The cuisson was perfect,” he proclaimed, by which he meant the cooking, only it sounded a lot more important in French.

Only Padma sounded an alarm, noting that the fried flounder in vadouvan sauce was “a teeny bit dry.”

Trouble ensued with Evelyn’s dishes. Judges loved the chile-charged, “vuelve a la vida” effect of her fish soup — “I can feel it,” said Boulud, waving his fingers next to both cheeks — but Tom wanted more fish in it. And oh, dear, the taco I figured she’d nail went awry with a tortilla some judges found too thick (“It sucked all the moisture and the life out,” said Dawn); and what Boulud lamented as a lack of garnish. “Here it was dotted, too precious,” he complained.

So even though the al pastor flavors had scored with Stephanie and Padma, I was stricken for our Houston favorite. Especially when Aaron Bludorn drove the nail in her coffin by noting that “both of Evelyn’s dishes were incredibly safe.”

Next came Sarah’s pseudo crudo and the smoked redfish “pastrami” number with Parisian caraway gnocchi and carrot butter. The judges went wild in the way that happens every couple of episodes. They couldn’t stop complimenting the deliciousness of that fermented kraut broth for the crudo, and the way slices of silken tofu played against the soft fish. “The combination of warm and cold, every little element is perfectly executed,” said Boulud.

The pastrami idea I had figured would sink her got raves for creativity. The fish was perfectly smoked, according to Tom. “So much going on!” exulted Padma. Boy, had I misunderestimated Sarah, as a certain ex-president might put it.

Of Damarr and Nick’s efforts, it pains me to write. I am fond of these guys, and as the judges weighed in, it became increasingly obvious one would go home. Damarr’s Asian touches never quite came together, the snapper in his crudo needed salt, the peanut vinaigrette in his blackened redfish was pronounced “gritty.”

And poor Nick, who forgot to add his pureed “fish binder” to the cakes, so that they wouldn’t hold together in the skillet. “The pile is not a cake,” observed Boulud with some asperity. Yikes, the taco didn’t work, either, if the misshapen, scorched tortilla I spotted was any indication.

Cut to the judges table. Buddha and Sarah made the podium, and by golly, Sarah won! Evelyn was among the three “least favorite,” but she was on the cusp, and after some tough love admonitions, she was sent on to the finals. Whew.

Then I had to endure the spectacle of Nick being asked to pack his knives and go. Reader, I hated it.

Next week, on to Tucson. At least they’ll be cooking with nopales and chiltepin, the official chile of the state of Texas.

Alison Cook - a two-time James Beard Award winner for restaurant criticism and an M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing award recipient - has been reviewing restaurants and surveying the dining scene for the Houston Chronicle since 2002.