The Voltaggio Brothers Battle for the First Time Since 'Top Chef' on 'Bobby's Triple Threat'

Michael Voltaggio got the surprise of a lifetime when his business partner and big brother Bryan walked into the Bobby's Triple Threat kitchen — even their family was in on the secret!

In 2009, the Voltaggio brothers competed on Top Chef: Las Vegas; after a tough, hard-fought competition, Michael took the top spot over runners-up Bryan and Kevin Gillespie. And while the appearance boosted all three chefs to celebrity chef fame — more TV appearances, more restaurants, book deals and more cooking than ever — Bryan never got the chance to challenge his little brother to a rematch. Until now.

"We haven't competed against each other at this serious of a level since Top Chef, and that was … emotional," says Michael. "It was hard. I ended up winning. But from there we became business partners, best friends."

But when it boils down to it, Michael's a Titan, ready to square off with anyone who enters Club 3, even his own brother. "I'm gonna stick with my Titans, and when it's time for business, it's time for business. Bryan's here for revenge."

The two brothers start grinning. "This just isn't what I thought I was coming into work to do today," says Michael, immediately and correctly clocking that he'll cook against Bryan in the final round.

But first, Bryan will have to get through Brooke Williamson. Naturally, Brooke spends quite a bit of time with the Voltaggio brothers, so she's very familiar with their cooking styles and competition strategies. "I love Michael and Bryan," she says. "I do a lot of events. I travel with them a lot. I actually feel like their adopted little sister, even though I'm technically older than Michael." (Superfans will remember Bryan and Michael have a little sister, Staci, who is a photographer and pastry cook, so yes, it simply runs in the family.)

Host Bobby Flay gives Brooke and Bryan 45 minutes to make two dishes with pork tenderloin and bourbon for the first round. In the first two rounds, the chefs can earn up to 10 points each, and in the final round, the chefs can earn 20 points each, for a total score of 40 points. If Bryan receives the highest score, he'll take home the $25,000 — plus permanent bragging rights, of course.

Michael Solomonov is a James Beard Award-winning Israeli chef known for his many restaurants in Philadelphia co-owned with his business partner, Steven Cook, including Laser Wolf (which also has a twin restaurant in Brooklyn, New York), Federal Donuts and the James Beard Award-winning Zahav, which they also published a James Beard Award-winning (are you noticing a trend here?) cookbook for, Zahav: A World of Israeli Cuisine. Their latest joint venture is Aviv (which means "spring" in Hebrew), located in South Beach's Hotel 1.

"Chef Michael's a legend," says Michael Voltaggio. "I've only maybe met him once or twice, but I know all about him. I know about his restaurants. I know about his food. I know about the style that he cooks … I've looked up to chef Michael for years."

Judge Solomonov will judge the dishes blind, with the chef behind the dishes only being revealed after scoring. When Bobby asks what he's looking for while judging a dish, Michael responds, "You want [the] execution to be great. You want the seasoning, the texture, all that, but really, I think the older I get, the more I just want an emotional reaction. I just wanna walk away from something with feeling."

Bryan comes right out of the gate with fierce tenacity. "I've never seen him like this," his brother comments. "He looks like a monster right now, like he's possessed."

But chefs and home cooks know that passion, drive, speed and serious multitasking can sometimes come at a cost. In this case, Bryan is stopped in his tracks when he slices his finger open on a knife block, a wound deep enough that the medic thinks he'll need stitches. The medic works quickly to tape him up, stop the bleeding and glove his hand so he can finish his cooking. Bryan manages to carry on like nothing happened.

Michael shows deep concern for his brother at first, but then suddenly turns to the camera and grins, "Mommy, Bryan got a boo-boo." Couldn't help himself.

Despite the injury, Bryan plates up. His first dish is pork and shrimp dumplings nested in coconut gochujang broth, topped with fresh herbs and lime; his second dish is a Diane-style pork tenderloin with bourbon and green peppercorns jus over corn grits and maitake mushrooms.

Judge Solomonov says Bryan's dumplings are "really fun to eat" and "really well made technically … [but] the presence of bourbon is pretty mellow." He loves the cook and crust on the Diane-style pork — "It's awesome," he says — but worries the acidity of the green peppercorns in the jus might have masked the bourbon. (Earlier, you could find a torn Michael sitting on his hands after commenting he wished his brother had cooked the mushrooms in the bourbon.)

He awards Bryan seven points for his dish. "I think that the bourbon's a little bit too in the background," he says. "But those dishes on their own, I think, were excellent."

Bobby notes that Brooke, known for her sun-kissed California cuisine, has been leaning toward a bolder, more spice-forward style in Season 4. "She's tenacious," he says. "She's fiesty, and she's really evolving."

Brooke makes a spice-rubbed pork tenderloin with a caramelized onion bourbon barbecue sauce, topped with tempura-battered onion rings; for her second dish, she makes a porcini mushroom-crusted pork schnitzel with mushroom bourbon sauce.

Judge Solomonov finds the spice-rubbed tenderloin perfectly cooked, but says the dish could have used a bit more acidity, as the bourbon barbecue sauce leans on the sweet side. The schnitzel dish brings him back to his school days. "Whenever my dad would have to make my school lunches, it would be cold schnitzel … This is cooked very, very nicely. The bourbon is nice and mellow and balanced. I do feel pretty emotional about this dish," he continues, getting a wide smile out of Brooke.

"As a chef, if you can evoke emotion, it is the highest compliment," she says. Judge Solomonov awards Brooke nine points, giving her the win for the round.

But this is a big night for the newest Titan, Ayesha Nurdjaja, as well. "She's never been to the second round," Bobby notes.

Bryan knows her self-described "newbie" status doesn't mean the next round will get any easier. "She's a very, very talented chef here in New York City," he says. "[She] has an incredible restaurant that's super hard to get into, but I've been fortunate to sit at that table. Every bite I had in that restaurant was phenomenal."

Bobby gives the chefs 45 minutes to cook two dishes with eggs and boucheron, a mild goat cheese with a gooey exterior and a creamy white interior, giving you two textures in one cheese.

"These are very simple, straightforward ingredients, but they're kind of hard to make them both stars," Ayesha says. "Bryan is a tough chef. He's serious, meticulous … I feel the pressure, but I'm gonna focus, lock it in and make a dish that's really in my wheelhouse."

Ayesha, known for her bold and unexpected Eastern Mediterranean dishes, feels like she's taking a gamble serving up judge Solomonov shakshuka, which she tops with eggs and the bucheron before putting it in the oven so the cheese melts down into the sauce: "Our judge cooks Israeli food, is Israeli, so it's kinda dangerous for me right now to cook in his wheelhouse."

It pays off: "It is really, really good. Holy cow," he says.

For her second dish, she serves up grilled cabbage with a six-minute egg in a pool of creamy bucheron fonduta. Much to Bryan's dismay ("I'm screwed") and Ayesha's pure delight, judge Solomonov calls it a perfect dish and gives Ayesha a score of 10 for the round. "And honestly, I think your shakshuka is better than mine," he adds. Ayesha may be the real winner tonight.

"Ayesha is a great piece of the puzzle for the Titans," says Bobby. "Her style of cuisine is something we hadn't had before … Ayesha also cooks with impact … I think it's really important to be successful in the world of competition cooking." (In case you didn't know, Ayesha asked Bobby to personally train her before joining the Titans.)

Bryan makes a Dutch baby with chickpea flour (to his brother's amazement: "Why aren't we serving that anywhere?"), hoping to capitalize on its eggy dough. "Michael normally knows what to expect [when] I'm competing," he says. "I wanna keep him guessing here." He tops the Dutch baby with brown butter, a soft-boiled egg, mustard leaf pesto and bucheron crema that he made by whipping the cheese with yogurt.

For his second dish, Bryan makes bucheron gnudi, a pillowy Italian dumpling normally made with eggs, cheese (the typical recipe usually calls for ricotta and Parmesan) and a bit of semolina flour. He doubles down on showcasing the eggs and serves the gnudi carbonara style with guanciale.

At the last minute, Bryan notices his Dutch babies aren't puffing up like they should and look a little dark. "It's such a dense flour," Brooke notes.

Though judge Solomonov calls the dish "unbelievable," he echoes Brooke during his tasting, finding the Dutch baby a bit too dense and dry. The gnudi follows a similar story, with judge Solomonov finding the gnudi dense and the sauce on the pasty side. "Gnudi and a Dutch baby in 45 minutes is incredibly impressive, but I just felt like the execution was lacking." He awards Bryan six points, giving the Titans another round win and Bryan a heavy deficit to make up.

With the score sitting at 13-19, Bryan needs to pull off a perfect cook to have a chance at beating the Titans and taking home the $25,000. But perhaps more importantly, he needs to lock in to pull off a win against his brother. "I've never beat Michael in a competition before, ever," he says. "So, I got one thing on my mind: I wanna go in and I wanna win this last round. Everything's at stake here."

For the final round, Bobby will give the brothers 40 minutes to make just one dish worth 20 points. He lets Bryan choose the two required ingredients. If you've ever watched Bryan in a cooking competition, you may have noticed he's not one for gimmicks or sabotage, choosing to simply let the best cook win. "I think Michael's expecting something obscure," Bryan says. "Something he's never worked with or something he hates, but I'm not doing that … I wanna go head-to-head and do it on an even playing field."

For his first ingredient, he chooses blue crab, an obvious call to their Maryland home. "Blue crab is [part] of their bloodline," Bobby jokes. For the second ingredient, he chooses paw-paw vinegar; paw-paws are a tropical fruit tree native to North America, which can be found along Maryland's Potomac River. Bryan says their fruit has "vanilla mango," and they sourced the vinegar from their friend in Virginia.

Michael feels good about the ingredients. Perhaps a little too good.

"Michael's got this very big energy working today," Bobby comments. "It's like he's frenetic a little bit. Bryan and Michael, they do everything together, but they definitely cook differently. Michael's got 400 things going at once. Bryan is a little more laid-back and ticking the boxes one after the other."

Michael claims he's keeping it "old school" and makes fresh squid ink pasta. For his sauce, he reduces a tomato sauce with colatura, an Italian fish sauce made with anchovies, and blue crab. He tops the pasta with brown butter breadcrumbs and a paw-paw vinegar-pickled crab salad. "The thing I love about Michael is he makes sure the food tastes great, and then he comes in with a flourish of something sort of cool and modern," Bobby says.

"This is excellent," says judge Solomonov. "Texture is great. Pasta is perfect. And that sort of crab spaghetti gravy … I live in Philly. This is our love language." But just when Michael thinks he's going 2-0 with Bryan, judge Solomonov adds, "I would say the only thing — [the] paw-paw vinegar, I would probably put in the sauce. And I feel like the chilled, kinda bright and acidic salad on top of pasta, I don't totally love."

Bryan's left with no choice but to pull out all the stops. He does a play on fish and chips by intricately forming oval patties of crab binded with a shrimp mousse that he batters and fries. For the chips element, he chooses sweet potatoes, punching out slices with a "cute little crab cutter" he bought. Once fried, he tops them with a Maryland spice blend.

But the true stunner of his dish is the fish sauce caramel. One wrong move here could lead to an unbalanced or burnt caramel sauce. He adds a big punch of paw-paw vinegar to the sauce, knowing the paw-paw flavor needs to come through or he won't be able to beat Michael.

Though Michael continues to jab at his brother — "Oh, you made a corn dog!" — after sampling the dish, even he has to admit … it's good. "Bryan just reinvented the crab cake … Bryan's execution in this round was definitely perfect." But siblings will always be siblings. "It's a good dish, but I hope you lose," he says, patting his brother on the back.

Judge Solomonov loves the dish. "That is *bleep* delicious." He calls the crab-shaped sweet potato chips "impressive and whimsical," and finds the caramel sauce a smart play. "It's tropical, super-duper umami, and the crab cake with shrimp mousse to bind everything is just the best crab cake you've ever had. It's amazing. Tastes like childhood."

"That was some of the best critiques I've had in cooking competitions, really, ever," says Bryan.

"I'm a little worried now," admits Michael, needing a 15 or better to pull off the win for the Titans. "This could be Bryan's day."

"If I'm gonna win, I have to beat Michael by seven points," says Bryan. "But I only need to beat him by one to beat him."

Judge Solomonov awards Bryan 20 points, a perfect score. "As I said, when I came in here, I'm interested in the emotional response. And that just did it. That exemplified it. It was genius."

This Season 4 score is the "first time a competing chef has ever gotten a perfect score here in the third round," Bobby notes. "Amazing."

Judge Solomonov gives Michael a 19, giving the Titans the overall win and a new record. "This was the highest cumulative score that we've had in the history of this competition."

But by one point, Bryan finally outpaces his brother. "Of course, I wanted to beat the Titans, but I beat Michael, so I'm pretty happy. I finally got him," Bryan says.