The climb to the top of the rocky mountain that is Top Chef Colorado has neared its end, with the peak clearly in sight. After 24 challenges, dozens of illustrious guest judges, and one particularly memorable encounter with Rocky Mountain oysters, two chefs remain to vie for this season’s title of Top Chef.

Adrienne Cheatham and Joseph Flamm, both Chicago-born, are hopeful that the final round will be a breeze, but they’ll soon encounter the highest-stakes meal of their lives. When host Padma Lakshmi makes the big announcement, the duo will be surrounded by 14 of their former competitors, who ultimately faced the chop.

In anticipation of this season’s finale, airing on Bravo on Thursday, March 8 at 9 p.m. ET, Adrienne and Joe talked with Parade about their journeys through the game, what the competition has taught them and the valuable friendship they’ve gained.

The last time we saw you two, you had just found out that you made the finals of Top Chef. What was going through your head at that moment? Was it something you had been expecting?

Adrienne Cheatham: I don’t know if you noticed through months in the competition, but I wasn’t doing very well. So I did not think I was going to make it there. What was going through my mind in the first place was, “Holy [expletive], I’m here, and there’s three of us.”

Joseph Flamm: I literally almost threw up.

Yeah, I remember you calling Padma out for being pretty mean in that moment!

Joseph: I was like, “Holy [expletive], I’m going home again! I thought they loved my dish.” They got me so good.

Joe, you had the unique circumstance of already being eliminated beforehand. Did that affect your feelings as you were handling the idea of making the finale?

Joseph: It was really crazy. I had gone home already, so I was just enjoying it. I had already thought my season was over, so this was all just icing on the cake. Then coming back, I thought, “OK, I guess there’s really not many of us left.” It was four of us; then it was three of us. The moment where they said, “You’re going to the finale,” I [just thought], “Holy [expletive]. (Laughs.) What now?!” It was just so unbelievable. I was so not prepared for it. I had come to peace with my season being done, and now it’s all on the line.

How did it feel watching the show? You obviously have your experiences as you remember them at the moment, but now you get to see multiple perspectives of those same events. What has that been like?

Adrienne: Watching it back is really weird. It’s one thing to go through it, but another to see it happen. When I was watching Restaurant Wars or the first team challenge that we did, you almost forget about it. So much time passed, and now you’re watching the episode, and you’re right back there.

Joseph: The weirdest thing, especially with this one where we go to the finale, is that this was a moment that when it happened, it was just Adrienne and me. Yeah, we’re there for each other, but you’ve got nobody to celebrate with except the person you’re going against…It’s like this moment happens, but it didn’t exist until five days ago. That was the amazing part of this week, getting to share that with everybody.

Adrienne: Yeah, finally!

Joseph: It felt like, “OK, now this actually happened. Here we go.” I think it’s been the most incredible thing. You have all these moments on the show that we shared with each other and the other people in the cast. But it’s the people in your life that haven’t gotten to see it yet, so it was special to have those moments with them.

Yeah, speaking of that, Adrienne, have you shown your face in any fish-based establishment since Chris Cosentino refused to eat your undercooked river trout in the Quickfire?

Adrienne: I have yet to…It was funny because Joe Sasto was like, “Oh my God, I overcooked my trout by mistake.” (Laughs.) But that probably saved [him]! It was funny because I know catfish are bottom-dwellers, but trout are not bottom-feeders. So I didn’t even think about that. I was just [thinking], “OK, I’ve had rare trout before. I’m fine.” Nope!

Let’s talk about your competitors. Something I noticed about your cast in particular as compared to other seasons is that you were overall very friendly and tight-knit. We saw that firsthand when Joe got eliminated, where there was a huge wave of sadness over the rest of the chefs. How hard did it become to see these people leave as the competition winnowed down?

Joseph: It’s hard. When we got there, you have to make a decision. You either treat it like a competition, where you’re here for yourself and everybody’s against you, or you treat it like a game, where we’re in it together. Someone’s going to win, but it’s going to be really [expletive] lonely if you treat it as a competition. I wanted to enjoy my time there; I wanted to enjoy the adventure. I felt like most everybody on the season was in the same boat. “Hey, we’re in this crazy thing together. Win, lose or draw, let’s appreciate this time and the craziness of it and realize how special this moment we’re in is.” You get so close to these people, and you’re so cut off. You have no outside world contact. These are the only people in your life for two months! (Laughs.) I was talking to my wife every five days for 10 minutes, and Adrienne, the same thing with her fiancé.

Adrienne: I think you get more out of it if you treat it like you’re in a kitchen. Everybody matters, you want to get along well. As a chef—line cook, sous chef, head chef—you don’t exist in a bubble in the kitchen. You have good service based on how well everybody does around you. The people you want to work with are the people who are in good moods and make the stress seem better. Everybody had that similar kitchen mentality where nobody’s like, “I’m just here for the competition.” Everybody really wanted to get the most out of meeting each other. It helps a lot with, as Joe was saying, being cut off. It made it not as bad being there.

Adrienne, I know something you and Joe have in common is that you both come from environments where you’ve been working for chefs and not really thinking about planning your own menu. How has Top Chef tied into that journey in realizing the food you want to cook?

Adrienne: What I really wish I had done earlier on was embrace it. After I left Red Rooster, I took some time off because I was in borderline burnout mode…When I got [to the show], I was doing things that I remembered, like muscle memory. “I’ve done this kind of dish before, I’ve done this kind of dish before.” But I didn’t really embrace doing my own stuff because I wasn’t comfortable with it yet because I still haven’t practiced it as much. It took a while for me to really get OK with that and just say, “You know what? That’s what Top Chef is. They want to see your food; they want to see your style. So don’t hide behind somebody else’s dishes; put yours out there. If they’re not good and you go home, that’s what it is. But at least you gave your own style and dishes enough respect to at least try.”

Joe, I want to talk about Last Chance Kitchen. How did you feel coming back? Were you confident, considering the challenges you had just won to get there, or nervous since you’ve already been eliminated before?

Joseph: It was really funny. You get kicked off the show, and you go to Last Chance Kitchen. You’re not living in the house anymore, so it’s a different pace. It’s not the intensity of the show; it’s a different intensity. [I had] nerves of going back into that stress machine. But watching the episode back, I was so psyched to see everybody and be back in that I wasn’t worried about going home. Your biggest fear going on the show was being sent home. And I was like, “OK, I lived that fear. I got sent home. That happened to me already.”

Adrienne, I want to speak about representation. In the very first episode, you talked about how you wanted to be the first black female Top Chef. You’ve also been the first black female chef to work at Le Bernardin, so you have some experience with breaking down those types of walls. Did you have these larger thoughts in your head throughout your time on the show, knowing you may be representing a demographic that doesn’t often get covered in the culinary world?

Adrienne: I didn’t necessarily think about that before. I really think that death and kitchens are the great equalizers in life. If you can’t sauté a steak, you can’t sauté a steak. If you can’t get crispy skin on a piece of fish or blanch a vegetable properly, it doesn’t matter what you look like. It just matters that you can’t do the job. So I always felt like I’m genderless. You’re a cook; you put your head down, and you work.

Joseph: There’s a great Anthony Bourdain quote. “There’s no lying in kitchens, and there’s no God either. But it doesn’t matter because he couldn’t help you anyway.” (Laughs.)

Joe, in the last episode, you said, “Top Chef is an exercise in clarity.” Can you elaborate on what you meant by that?

Joseph: This ties in really well to both me and Adrienne. It’s such an exercise in finding yourself and finding your voice. Right before Restaurant Wars, they were talking to me in an interview. They were casually asking me about everyone else, and then they asked me about Adrienne. And I was like, “If that girl finds her voice, she is scary, scary dangerous. She obviously has the skills.” It’s such an exercise in that. When you’re cooking a full meal for someone, and I write menus for someone at the restaurant, I have a whole repertoire to show you who I am. But then I have one dish or one bite to explain to you who I am as a chef and what my food is. Maybe you’re the guest judge, and you’re not the judges who have been eating. You’re Daniel Boulud, and you’ve only eaten one dish this season. I have to show you in one dish why I should go to the next round. That’s all I’ve got. If your idea isn’t clear and concise, you’re in huge trouble. Joe Sasto going into that last challenge was like, “I’m not sure what this dish is going to be.” And once you’re there, you’re done. He knew it. He, Adrienne, and I were drinking a beer in my tent—it feels like yesterday—after that [challenge]. He looked at both of us and said, “I’m going home because of that. I know I’m going home.”

Adrienne, let’s talk about that struggle in the beginning. What was going through your head in those initial rounds when you kept finishing on the bottom? How do you compartmentalize not meeting those expectations along with continuing to stay in the competition?

Adrienne: You feel awful! It’s so mental. You do have to compartmentalize things. Because if you keep thinking, “Oh my God, I was on the bottom, but this person went home.” You feel bad that this person went home; both of you made mistakes, it’s just whose mistake was worse to the judges. But if you dwell on it so much, you’ll go down this black hole that you won’t be able to dig yourself out [of] for the next challenge. You’ll be so doubtful and insecure about what you’re doing that you won’t, like Joe said, have a concise, clear vision. [If] you won’t be able to explain it well, you won’t be able to execute it well.

Joseph: It’s a little chink in your brain armor.

Adrienne: You have to steel yourself. Otherwise, you’ll just be swimming in circles, doing 360s and not getting anything done. A lot of my hesitation with doing the food I started doing later is because it’s untested. The pop-up series is starting soon, but it hadn’t started yet when we started filming. It’s kind of like, “Ooh, I can do this dish. But I’m not sure; I haven’t really tested it out enough to be comfortable doing it.” And when someone gives you 30 or 45 minutes to create a dish, it’s got to be something that you know. It’s got to be something that you’re like, “Boom! I can knock this out, do it well, and not be scrambling and don’t get it on the plate.”

Joe, you briefly mentioned the judges you got to serve throughout the season. Have either of you had a favorite guest judge from your time on the show?

Joseph: Restaurant Wars was really high up there. Our team was awesome; I thought it was so fun. One of my favorite moments of the season was when Tom walks back into the kitchen and Adrienne and Carrie are sitting there knocking back prep. And he’s like, “So which one of you is representing Front of House?” And they said, “Nah man, Joe Flamm.” The look on Tom’s face…

Adrienne: Priceless.

Joseph: Because they don’t get to know our personalities, they’re very kept away from us. They just know our food. It was so funny, and our team was built so well. We had these two monster cooks on the line in Adrienne and Carrie, Bruce on the pass, and me on the floor. We had so much fun…it was high-energy and awesome. I loved that one; that was a really special one to me.

Adrienne: That was one of my favorite services of my career. (Laughs.)

Joseph: I love Adrienne, and she was so up and down in the first half of [the season]. But this was the first one where we really just kicked some ass. It felt like we didn’t survive this challenge, we kicked the [expletive] out of it. That felt really good. [I also think] the one where our families came was very emotional. And Daniel Boulud and Chris Cosentino were probably two of my favorite judges. Boulud is so intimidating. He’s just a guy who walks into the room, and every chef is like, “Hi, chef. Yes, chef. Oui, chef.”

Adrienne: You tighten up…

What about a favorite challenge?

Adrienne: Obviously the gumbo one was probably my favorite because that’s when I felt I started to get my [expletive] together. Before that, I hate to say that I hated the challenges where I was on the bottom. But I learned from them; I learned I’m failing at executing other people’s foods. It’s horrible. (Laughs.) So why I am doing somebody else’s things poorly that aren’t well thought-out? I don’t have enough time to actually do them because these are things that take several more hours to prep. Why don’t I just say, “Forget it” and just do mine? I think governor’s mansion was probably the one [that was] a wake-up call. We’re cooking for a smaller amount of people; there are no crazy bells and whistles or hoops you have to jump through to present your food. That’s when I could focus on the food and really say clearly, “This is what I’m doing from hear on out.” That was probably my favorite challenge in terms of my trajectory and being able to execute my food.

Throughout the competition, you two seemed to build up a close friendship. Now you get to face off against each other for the grand prize. Talk to me about what you learned about the other person getting to cook alongside them over the course of the season.

Joseph: Going into the finale, I saw her cook that gumbo, and that was the first dish where I was like, “OK, this is Adrienne’s food.” It was a visually stunning dish, it was delicious, and it was beautiful. I was like, “This is going to be a battle! I mean, this is a chef who worked at three Michelin star restaurants for eight years. Here we [expletive] go. We’re going to battle it out right now.” I knew she was going to bring everything, and I knew I had to be on my game. It was overwhelming, but at the same time I was so excited for it. This is why we’re here. This is why we came here: to stand toe to toe and put up our best meal against each other…I’m proud that I made it this far and that I get to stand here and share a kitchen with a chef of this caliber.

Adrienne: Well I don’t like Joe nearly as much. Nah, just kidding. (Laughs.) Joe is a genuinely good person. The first time I met him, I didn’t know he was from the south side of Chicago, but I was like, “There’s something about this guy that I like.” You feel easy, you feel comfortable. And seeing his food over the course of the season, I’m like, “Wow, he’s working different types of cuisine. He worked with Southern, he’s worked with Asian flavors, he’s worked with Italian.” He grew up with Italian, so he has such a depth of knowledge. And he executes them so well that I’m like, “I’m just getting comfortable doing my food, but it has to come off flawlessly. I have to execute it to meet him at the same level. Beat him or [don’t] beat him, I know that he is going to bring it. I know his food is going to be flawless, delicious, and visually stunning.” So I know this is going to be the challenge I’ve waited for, and the person I really wanted to compete against as well.