On the show, the panel judges are the ultimate deciders as to who stays and who Lakshmi tells to “pack [their] knives and go.” Colicchio has long maintained that food alone is the defining factor that drives their choices, as they’re kept quarantined from all the chef contestants’ post-kitchen drama. But according to Entertainment Weekly, a cameraman named “T-Bone,” who snaps glamour shots of the food while tasting is happening, is often turned to for a backup opinion on which plate was the winner of the day (or 2½ days, as the shooting schedule would have it) when the judges are stumped and production is pushing into the night.
Moreover, ChoppyChoppy revealed on Reddit that from a contestant’s perspective, it did seem that “there was a particular interest in [competitors] who were hot headed and who were driving the overall storyline,” adding that he or she was nixed “relatively early” after being “up against a big personality” and that “they have a bias to keeping more women on the show than need be.”