This “everything’s better with bacon on it” concept needs to be tested. But that’s for another time. Right now let’s focus on Top Chef, and what may be the first professionally made parody music video based on a popular food competition show. The guys over at Funny or Die have posted the video showing Gail Simmons critiquing Ashley, Bryan, and Mattin from the most recent season. more…

The finale of Top Chef began as a roller coaster of near redemption and just missed opportunity for me. What opportunity? To be right in my choosing Stefan and Jamie as the final chef’s to be left standing. Sadly that was not to be, but in better news this episode actually had the entire roster of cheftestants bringing a deep understanding of the cuisine being prepared, and in most cases passion. more…

Top Chef New York is almost over. And the question is what city could they possibly go to after having spent the season in the capital of food? New Orleans turns out to be the answer, and I am a tad excited at the prospects. See, when I first started to cook seriously in my early 20’s I was a huge fan of southern food. Especially the items coming out of NOLA. I’m certain I’ve made jambalaya more than any other dish, even though I haven’t even had any in over two years. more…

Bravo sent along some more info on Top Chef Masters, the spinoff of the James Beard Award winning cooking show slated for a fall premiere. For those who don’t know the new show will features twenty-four contestants competing in challenges that mimic the Quickfire and Elimination challenges of the original series. Of course the title of “top” gets a bit suspect when you now have “masters” donning the cheftestant whites to compete. more…

As the end of tonight’s episode came closer my wife kept proclaiming that “your guy” is going to go home, meaning Stefan. I couldn’t explain to her that I didn’t really like Stefan, but he’s a great chef. Did that stop her from continually harassing me about being wrong in my Top Chef predictions? Nope. There are just some people you can’t watch Top Chef with, and my wife is one of them. She’s a jerk. more…

Well this episode of Top Chef made two people look like a fool. The first is me with my now lame predictions on who will be in the finale. But I’m sticking with Stefan, he’s still the man. The other fool I’ll reveal later. Bringing Eric Ripert onto Top Chef usually means two things: fish, and back to basics French cooking. And that came through in spades, much to Jamie’s apparent annoyance. Seriously, she seemed to have such a chip on her shoulder the entire time that I knew what would happen before it did. more…

This week the cheftestants are given a huge challenge: don’t mess with Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin. Once again Chef Ripert returns to Top Chef as the “fish guy,” with the remaining six battling it out in a fish filleting Quickfire. That is then followed up with the cheftestants taking over the kitchen of Le Bernardin in NYC. The problem is they have to live up to Chef Ripert’s high standards. more…

It’s time for me to put down what I think will happen for the remainder of Top Chef. There’s been enough time to get a feel for the competing chefs, so I feel comfortable in my choice of winner. Now the order in which the remaining cheftestants pack up their knives might vary, especially since some of these people are on near equal footing (Hosea and Leah, for example) it could come down to a simple slip-up. more…

It’s been two weeks since I’ve been able to watch Top Chef — I was in Sundance for the last two episodes – and I come back to three of the strongest players hitting the bottom. Pile on top of that one of the weaker cheftestants, in my opinion, coming out on top in the Elimination Challenge. It was a topsy turvy world for this returning Top Chef fan. more…

It’s been two weeks since last we entered Top Chef kitchen. And the return was worth the wait, even if Jean Christophe Novelli took things way too seriously. Not that he shouldn’t, but a chuckle now and then wouldn’t kill. At least Toby Young, London food critic extraordinaire was on hand to provide some of the most quotable moments in Top Chef history. more…