upper waypoint

America's Next Top Project Chef

Save ArticleSave Article
Failed to save article

Please try again

Well, Bravo's Top Chef is the newest food reality show to hit the airwaves on a television near you. Shot in San Francisco and hosted by Tom Colicchio, owner of New York City's Gramercy Tavern, and Billy Joel's wife, Kathy Lee (who really needs to learn something from her husband about injecting some emotion into her lines), Top Chef is Bravo's attempt to keep their viewers tuned in and sated until the next season of Project Runway.

Let's review what has gone before: there was Rocco DiSpirito's horrific train wreck, The Restaurant, which was more about the waitstaff backbiting and Rocco schmoozing with women all over the front of the house than it was about the actual kitchen. The even more train-wrecky second season was supposedly more scandalous as it involved Rocco actually being shoved out of his restaurant ownership, but I never watched it. Still not enough food for me. Next up, there was PBS' Cooking Under Fire, the boring likes of which I couldn't stomach. Or maybe it was Todd English I couldn't stomach, I forget. The Food Network has its overly promoted The Next Food Network Star. You know, the first season wasn't bad, but what happened to the guys who won? Has their new show hit the airwaves, like, ever? I have to say, I'm not real inclined to watch the new season until that question gets answered. And finally, we have Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, which is my very personal favorite. I don't know if it's his excessively craggy face or that I've planned a drinking game around him announcing, "That's a dog's dinner, that is! GET BACK ON YOUR STATION!" (you have to chug your entire glass if he then shoves the plate of food on the hapless contender's whites) that makes me lust for this show. Come on, how can you resist a foul-mouthed chef who suggests to a table of fame-whoring blondes that they "get back to [their] botox, darling"? Well, not me, for one and that's why I'll be watching the new season when it starts up again on FOX in June.

Top Chef is structured a pinch like Cooking Under Fire and a smidge like Survivor. In the first episode, the competitors first have to hold the line at Fleur de Lys for thirty minutes of dinner service. If they screw up -- dropping food, shaky hands, and sticking a finger in the sauce to taste all will get you gone -- Chef Keller asks them to leave the kitchen. At the end of everyone's trial, a winner is announced and given immunity for the next challenge. The next challenge has all the cheflings cooking their "signature dish" that all the other competitors and judges will taste, rate, and generally give a good chew-over, and this time, the loser goes home.

While the first episode got off to a bit of a slow start by retreading already-done territory, next week one of cheflings (it's only the first episode, I haven't committed their names to memory yet, god) tells the Las Vegas Snooty Sommelier chefling, "Obviously you're a tool and a douchebag." Since I happen to agree with her, I'm definitely coming back for seconds.

Sponsored

Top Chef airs on Bravo on Wednesdays at 10pm. If your TiVo chokes on a pretzel or you miss an episode check your listings, because they are repeating the hell out of it.

lower waypoint
next waypoint