Any time a chef makes awesome recovery from all the sabotages, intentional or unintentional.
Any time a chef manages to win the final round despite falling victim to all sabotages.
Anyone who leaves Cutthroat Kitchen with over $20,000, which has rarely been done. The two tend to go hand in hand given the nature of the game. The Ultimate Moment Of Awesome would be winning $25,000, a Flawless Victoryand a Pacifist Run. FINALLY accomplished by Chef Kyle in "The Cone Ranger", 2014's last episode. And then again by Chef Mikery in "The Chefshank Redemption", 2016's last episode.
Any time there is a very close final round, where it's clear that both chefs gave it their all and the work is quite impressive.
Any time the chef has no idea how to cook the target dish and does it perfectly. Even better, if it's in the Final Round.
Anytime a chef makes use of the tank of liquid nitrogen sitting in a corner to cool their food quickly. The stuff boils at -320° Fahrenheit!
According to Alton, anyone who gets two or more sabotages in the first round usually don’t survive, so anyone who does gets an awesome point.
Specific instances include:
Antonia Lofaso has won both judges' episodes. Not only that, but both times she made it to the final round without spending any of her money and thus had the full $25,000 to sabotage her opponent with.
Chef Mae in "Kiss My Grits" won the third round and the game despite having only plastic table knives with which to cut.
Doubles as an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, but it counts. In "A Penny For Your Chocolates", Chef Chris didn't know how to bake cookies and got no baking soda in the pantry, since his opponent grabbed both boxes. With about 5 minutes left, and his cookies not coming out the way he wanted to, he decides to make "chocolate chip cookie fritter". His deconstruction of the dish was enough for him to win the episode. Even better, Alton notes in the Webisode that the crew liked his fritters so much they ate the rest of the batch.
Chef Jessica's win in "Melts in Your Pot, Not in Your Hand." She got almost all the sabotages, and both sabotages in the final round, and prevailed. One of her competitors paid her the tribute of calling a "culinary whack-a-mole; I just keep hitting her and she just keeps poppin' back up."
"Crabs of Steel" has the first tie (of only one of two) in the history of Cutthroat Kitchen: with the final dish being pineapple upside-down cake, Chef Eric and Chef Alexis bring up their games, sabotages and all, being the first pair to bring Jet Tila to give them a tie (as Alexis hit the flavor perfectly and Eric did the technical points wonderfully; Jet even had to eat all their desserts to find a definitive winner but couldn't). Alton said in the "After Show" Webisode "This had to be the finest Cutthroat Kitchen round ever."
The second was when Simon Majumdar declared a tie in "Domo Arigato, Mr. Gelato". The final dish was gelato with pizzelle; one chef gave him the perfect gelato, the other had the perfect pizzelle. Simon could not decide between either dishes.
Eric Greenspan, in "Superstar Sabotage"
In the heat, he breezes through the first two rounds without even bidding on a sabotage. Then, he goes up against Johnny Iuzzini in the final round. The challenge is lemon bars. Iuzzini is a pastry chef. Greenspan has never made a lemon bar. Greenspan has never eaten a lemon bar. Greenspan wins and walks out with $24,600. Granted, it was helped by Iuzzini's reckless bidding in round 2 — Dude had $100 left, the absolute lowest anyone can possibly go in Cutthroat Kitchen while still having money — but still an awesome performance in every sense of the word.
On top of that, Greenspan moved on to the finale, where the stakes were doubled ($50,000 for each chef to work with), and won the finale and an additional $45,000, bringing the total amount of his winnings for charity to $69,600!
A wonderful Darkhorse Victory came at the final heat of "Superstar Sabotage". Chef Fabio Viviani was going up against Elizabeth Falkner, baker extraordinaire, in the final round of banana bread. Both chefs got their Moment of Awesome.
Chef Elizabeth was poorhoused into getting both sabotages in the final round — replace all bananas with green bananas and peels, and replace all cooking and mixing utensils with banana leaves. However, she made a creative take on banana bread making it a banana tamale and bananas foster milkshake. Not to mention, she got her eggplants pulverized for Eggplant Parmesean and still pulled out a great dish. To top it all off, she fought her way to the top because she got hit with the most sabotages in the episode.
Chef Fabio never baked before, let alone do a banana bread. However, with his experimentation, he produced the perfect banana bread.
Antonia Lofaso was having a hard time determining the winner, but she gave the win to Chef Fabio because Chef Elizabeth failed to take advantage of the banana peels to make an extract, which could've given her the banana flavor she was missing. This has to rank as one of the top 4 episodes in Cutthroat Kitchen.
Another point to Fabio in the second Superstar Sabotage Tournament: Given how he managed to only place second the first time, it’s quite impressive he made it all the way this time.
The final dessert battle of the Evilicious Tournament crossed this with Funny Moments. Asked to make coconut macaroons, the second sabotage is to give up all the dried, sweetened coconut and then harvest and use fresh coconut hanging from a fake palm tree. The sabotaged chef, Yaku, (who is almost seven feet tall and built like a weightlifter), tosses the puny stick for spearing them, plucks the coconut, and smashes them open with his bare hands to harvest the meat out for his cookies with barely any time wasted. He lost by a razor thin margin because he decided to bake one and fry the other, which didn't sit well with the judge.
Chef Craig's victory in "Carne Diem".
In the first round, the target dish is a French omelet. Before the round even began, he had to do all his mixing using a loaf of French bread and could only cook his food on a spiral-shaped spatula. Mid-round, he was bound to a competitor with a French flag. Craig survives because he had the best omelet of the four presented; the chef who avoided all of the sabotages in the round was eliminated.
The second-round challenge is carne asada. Craig gets targeted by each of his two remaining adversaries as he is forced to dig his ingredients out of a giant burrito. In addition, he has to do all his prep, cooking, and presentation using extending arms while standing roughly six feet above his work station. As was the previous case, Craig delivers the best dish while the chef who avoided every sabotage in the round is eliminated.
Craig: Obviously, I must be the competition here, because everybody's after me.
Baked apples are asked for in the final round. Craig is spared a prep-station swap out, but has to surrender all his pantry ingredients for random items found in plastic apples that fall from the sky. Craig won because judge Jet Tila thought Chef Carolina, the only remaining contestant, delivered a dish that didn't taste quite right.
Chef Adia's victory in "Sabootage 2: Electric Boogaloo". Anybody who can make healthy candy earns a spot in the winner's book.
During the "Grandma-tage" episode, during the final round to make a pie, Grandma Nancy got stuck with both sabotages, forcing her to spend all of the round (including the ingredient shopping period) in a mobility scooter. On top of that, all of her ingredients were confiscated for a "Pie eating contest to harvest new ingredients" that left little time for her to make her custard pie. She chose to make use of the microwave, normally the cooking device of last resort for the professional chefs or even a sabotage itself. However, she gets around this, by repeatedly heating it for a little bit, then whisking it, and repeated until it was ready, letting her get caught up and make a presentable dish that gave her the win.
It ended up impressing both Alton and judge Jet Tila in the after-show upon learning about Nancy's technique. Alton reasons that restaurant-trained chefs are not taught (or flat out warned to avoid) the use of a microwave in cooking; for a home cooking grandmother who probably regularly uses it in their house for both reheating and cooking, it is a perfectly viable tool.
The Veteran's Day 2015 special. Army Chef Brad gets smacked with a sabotage in which he has to relay all cooking instructions to "Private Bob" and can't touch any food or equipment himself. He plays it to the hilt, shouting orders in an FCC-acceptable version of Drill Sergeant Nasty at the top of his lungs. His loud and obnoxious hamming it up becomes a MASSIVE distraction to everyone else in the kitchen, so that the sabotage targeted at him ends up affecting the others as well. So noteworthy that it's been mentioned 3 times in these pages for being a noteworthy example of a trope, awesome, AND funny.
Later on, Air Force Chef Bella has to trade in her ingredients for a box full of food that gets blown up right in front of everyone. Alton gets hit by some of the fallout, even though he's taken cover in the pantry, and barely even blinks. Of course, Alton is a Mythbusters alumnus, and you don't come away from that show without some explosion resistance.
In "Deep Pu-Pu", Rocco DiSpirito sabotaged himself in the second round by forgetting to get flour or any starch for making tortellini. Does he give up or panic? No. He makes tortellini out of a scallop and egg-white paste. The dish is a success, and he goes on to survive to the final round. Think about that: he made pasta with no starch.
Eric Greenspan in a bouillabaisse challenge gets hit with a sabotage stating he has to do all his mixing and cooking in clam shells. So, how he works it? A bouillabaisse ceviche. He doesn't even try traditional cooking at all. And then he sells it so masterfully his competitors end up scraping their jaws off the floor.
In a ramen challenge during the 2015 Superstar Sabotage finale, Richard Blais is forced to give up all his ingredients and pick five items off a restaurant menu written entirely in Japanese. He ends up with lasagna, Chicago-style hot dogs, jalapeño poppers, meatloaf, and cioppino (seafood stew). Richard manages to cobble together a "Late-Night Leftover Ramen" from these odds and ends and survive the round, largely because it reminds Simon of a similar meal he ate during a visit to Japan.
Chef Kaimana in "50 Shades of Sorbet" coming out of Cutthroat Kitchen without being hit by any form of sabotage and a respectable $17,600.
In "Meanwhile, Back on The Huevos Rancheros", Chef Bobby comes out of the pantry without pasta for a pasta primavera challenge. Then a sabotage comes up with the option to harvest pasta from a statue. When Chef Stew wins it, Bobby puts on a convincing act of not wanting to be stuck with the sabotage. And Bobby gets stuck with it. Leading Bobby to survive the round.
Alton: You just paid this to give pasta to a guy who came out of the pantry without pasta.
In Season 4, a contestant legitimately misheard "biscuits and gravy" as "brisket and gravy". English wasn't his first language. As a result, the judge judged it as "brisket and gravy", rather than immediately failing him for having the wrong dish. He not only survived the round but his brisket was highly praised, and the only actual criticism the judge gave his dish was that it wasn't biscuits and gravy. Additionally this changed the format of the show with Alton always making sure he makes the expected ingredients and preparation methods very clear.
2017 Valentine's Day special. Getting eliminated is not usually this trope, but when you stop your walk out the losers' hallway by making a Wacky Marriage Proposal? And she says "yes!" Then, you've officially made losing awesome.
There's a reason winning the final round (and thus, the game) while taking both sabotages is listed at the top of the page: it's extremely difficult and, thus, rarely done. Kate Von Schledorn did it TWICE - once in her original appearance and then repeating the feat in her Camp Cutthroat heat.
Outside of tournaments, until Chef Kyle in "The Cone Ranger", the highest amount won was by Chef Huda in "S'mortal Combat": $23,900. She got sabotaged once in Round One, and she didn't spend money on sabotages until last round where she had her full $25,000 against a competitor who only had $500.
Another notable winner is Chef Amber. After being the first contestant eliminated due to injury, she came back in “Fry Hard” and proved herself she can handle Cutthroat Kitchen.
The show has two vegan winners: Chef Kristina from "2 Chefs 1 Toga" and Chef Vita from "Lamb-a Dama Ding Dong" with great winnings ($18,500 and $18,400, respectively). Chef Kristina went through the entire competition by cooking the vegan version of all dishes, while Chef Vita took the opposite approach and cooked the dishes as they are without tasting them.
One for Chef Johnny, the winner of "A Few Good Ramen". Like Chef Craig, he was hit with 6 sabotages but still managed to win.
Then there is this moment in the third round. When the first auction went up, he made sure he bid just enough that when his opponent bought it, they wouldn't be able to outbid him for the second sabotage.
In the Season 12 judges' episode, "Judge's Dread," Simon Majumdar in the third round is forced to sit in a soundproof chamber while Alton briefs Antonia Lofaso on the round's dish (brownie sundae). Majumdar took careful notes on Lofaso's technique and adjusted his dish accordingly, while Lofaso baked several ingredients for a fruit tart to throw him off the scent while surreptitiously preparing the ingredients for her brownie sundae, leaving Majumdar to realize he'd been had in the final minutes as she threw together the ingredients for her microwave brownie and completed her ice cream with the liquid nitrogen. Unable to prepare his own brownie in time, Majumdar made the best of the situation, doctoring up the spectacularly beautiful fruit tart he'd made with enough chocolate shavings (and the ice cream he'd already started) and giving guest judge Eric Greenspan a very hard time deciding if his dish was close enough to a brownie sundae to eke out the win. Lofaso won the round, because she'd delivered a brownie sundae and Majumdar hadn't, but what a finish.
