Season 7 of Top Chef concluded on Wednesday, with underdog Kevin Sbraga taking home the big prize.

Although Kevin was a personal favorite of mine and many of my friends, search interest in him remained low throughout the competition.  As you might recall, I took a look at search interest in Top Chef contestants a few weeks back, and predicted that Kelly would be the winner.

At the time, Kevin had the least interest and based on the chart below, searchers remained uninterested. On the other hand, search volume for Angelo and Ed, the other two contestants in the finale, increased quite a bit over the past couple weeks.

Unfortunately, Google Insights for Search doesn’t give us a glimpse into the very latest Top Chef trends for the last few days. I turned to Google Trends, but Kevin is missing there too, upstaged by Prince Poppycock of America’s Got Talent fame.

The self-professed “Barack Obama of the cooking game” may not have piqued America’s search curiosity, but the judges were impressed enough by his mastery of the kitchen to make him Top Chef.

Top Chef is nearing the end of yet another absolutely addictive season and the competition is getting hotter than the Kenmore ranges used by the chefs.

While catching up on some recent episodes on my DVR, the search geek in me started thinking about a correlation between a chef’s performance on the show and the interest they are generating on the search engines.

Unlike shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, Top Chef winners are decided by the panel of judges instead of audience votes.  But are the judges thinking along the same lines as the rest of America?  Is the most searched chef really the Top Chef? I took a look at Google Insights for Search to understand the trends.

Angelo, who had been quite popular early on in the competition has seen his interest simmer down (pun intended) since the first few weeks of competition.  Maybe viewers lost interest due to his abrasive personality.

Kelly has seen her chicken stock rise over the course of August.  Maybe it’s her skills or maybe it’s because she’s just so darn cute.

If Google Insights can predict a winner, Kelly might be our next Top Chef.  Let’s see if Padma and company agree in the upcoming weeks.

As they say in TV-land, stay tuned.