Category — Top Chef

For fans of reality TV cooking shows Top Chef is one of the best. Unfortunately it is only shown on pay TV.

The show has professional chefs who fight it out for the title of Top Chef. The prize is $125,000 and a showcase the the Food & Wine Magazine show in Aspen. This is the tenth season of the show, and it does not get dull. They refresh it with new cities and new judges and guest judges. Padma Lakshmi is still host with Tom Collicchio, they and Gail Simmons continue to be the stalwarts on the panel. However this series Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Legasse and Hugh Acheson are also guest judges.

One of the twists of this season is they brought back three chefs from previous seasons. Cocky Stefan, lanky CJ and Josie who was on Season two, a series I have not watched.

The great thing about this show is the cooking as well as the casting. They also film in their house and the holding room whilst waiting to hear who the judges are going to send home, and this can take hours a few beers and tempers can explode. These chefs have egos. John Tesar the 54 year old from Texas who had a big rep in New York in the ’80′s but drugs were his downfall is great to watch. He is rubbing a few contestants up the wrong way. Also Stefan who considers himself a pants man is trying to rub up some female contestants in a flirtatious way. It will be interesting to see if he succeeds.

The contestants are:

- Lizzie Binder, a 37-year-old from Napa, CA

- Tina Bourbeau, a 42-year-old from New York, NY (eliminated ep 1)

- Chrissy Camba, a 30-year-old from Chicago, IL

- Stephanie Cmar, a 27-year-old from Boston, MA (eliminated ep 1)

- Micah Fields, a 28-year-old from Los Angeles, CA

- Eliza Gavin, a 38-year-old from Telluride, CO

- Anthony Gray, a 35-year-old from Macon, GA (Eliminated ep 1)

- Jeffrey Jew, a 34-year-old from Washington, DC (eliminated ep 2)

- Gina Keatley, a 32-year-old from New York, NY (eliminated ep 1)

- Kristen Kish, a 28-year-old from Boston, MA

- Danyele McPherson, a 31-year-old from Dallas, TX

- Daniel O’Brien, a 32-year-old from Washington, DC (eliminated ep 1)

- Carla Pellegrino, a 43-year-old from Las Vegas, NV

- Jorel Pierce, a 28-year-old from Denver, CO (eliminated ep 1)

- Sheldon Simeon, a 30-year-old from Lahaina, HI

- John Tesar, a 54-year-old from Dallas, TX

- Joshua Valentine, a 32-year-old from Oklahoma City, OK

- Bart Vandaele, a 41-year-old from Washington, DC

- Tyler Wiard, a 41-year-old from Denver, CO

- Brooke Williamson, a 33-year-old from Los Angeles, CA

- Kuniko Yagi, a 35-year-old from Los Angeles, CA (eliminated ep 3)

Currently in Australia it is up to episode four.

Top Chef – Seattle on Arena TV Monday nights at 9.30pm

Russell Crowe appears to be moving on from his split with Danielle Spencer as rumour has it that he has been seen with former host of Top Chef Katie Lee.

Katie Lee is a chef but her profile was raised when she married Billy Joel. They divorced after five years of marriage. She appears to like older men.

Russell Crowe and the thirty one year old Katie Lee have been seen canoodling at the Greenwich Hotel according to news.com.au and she was also seen at a gig of his.

She was host of the first season of Top Chef and then was sacked and replaced with Padma Lakshmi.  She has also been a judge on Iron Chef America.

If you want to see more about her here is a recent interview from You Tube where she talks about her new book.

Padma Lakshmi fans will be happy to know she has posed for Playboy, but the bad news is she keeps her clothes on.

The Top Chef host also gave an interview where she talks about her marriage to Salman Rushdie.

She talks about her marriage to author Salman Rushdie:

“I don’t regret a day I spent with Salman, but it was tiring. He has a big life, and it only got bigger when we were together. I’m happy to have stood next to him holding his hand, but we were in very different parts of our lives.”

Celebrity blog In Case You Did Not Know It has a further transcript of the interview.

When Donald Trump best known for his hair, and being host to the US version of Celebrity Apprentice announced he was not going to put his hat in the ring for the Republican Presidential nomination I was disappointed.

However I always thought Reality Ravings would be able to report on the election because dabbler in reality TV Sarah Palin might run. She has crushed these dreams this week saying she is not seeking nomination. So it looks like reporting on the US Presidential’s is not going to occur.

However another Republican President nomination has had a brush with reality TV, but this time it was Top Chef production company Magic Elves sued has the Texas attorney general to prevent the release of information in documents from the Governor Rick Perry’s office related to the $400,000 Texas paid for product placement in the new season.

Reality Blurred reports:
The lawsuit, filed Monday, says that, as part of its brand integration with Texas, “Magical Elves provided confiential and propreitary information regardng Top Chef, as well as creative concepts and production ideas for Top Chef: Texas,” and the documents they want to protect include “proposals, correspondence, and related documents.”

Why is it always the Republicans involved in reality TV, and not the Democrats?

Australian chef Curtis Stone will be seen on our screens in his role as host on Top Chef Masters from Monday 19 September on Arena TV.

Curtis took over the role of host from Kelly Choi. I was never a fan of Kelly’s as you rarely saw her eat the food.

Top Chef Masters is different from Top Chef in that the cheftestants are highly respected chefs.

Jay Rayner fans will be disappointed to know that he has been fired from the show, the reason being because Curtis Stone is Australian they only wanted one foreign accent on the show. Here is a cracker of a interview with Jay Rayner for eater.com, and  love him even more for saying there was to much hype around David Chang.

Gael Greene has also been replaced by Ruth Reichl.

The Contestants are:

Hugh Acheson - Chef/ Partner: Five& Ten, The National, Gosford Wine – in Athens, GA and Empire State South, Atlanta, GA; Competing for Wholesome Wave Foundation

Floyd Cardoz – Former Executive Chef/Partner- of Tabla and soon-to-be Executive Chef/Partner of a new Danny Meyer restaurant; Competing for Young Scientist Cancer Research Fund

John Currence - City Grocery Restaurant Group, Oxford, MS Competing for No Kid Hungry

Traci Des Jardins - Chef/Co-owner of Jardinière, Mijita Cocina Mexicana and Public House and Manzanita, San Francisco, CA; Competing for La Cocina

George Mendes - Chef/Co-Owner of ALDEA, Manhattan, NY; Competing for Charity: Water

Mary Sue Milliken - Co-Chef/ Owner: Border Grill Restaurants and Truck, Los Angeles, CA; Competing for Share Our Strength

Naomi Pomeroy - Owner: Beast in Portland, OR; Competing for Seed Savers Exchange

Suvir Saran - Executive Chef: Dévi, New York, NY; Competing for Agricultural Stewardship Association

John Rivera Sedlar - Owner: Playa, Los Angeles, CA; Competing for American Diabetes Association

Alex Stratta - Executive Chef: Stratta, Las Vegas, NV; Competing for Faster Cures, part of the Milken Prostate Cancer Foundation

Celina Tio - Chef/Owner: JULIAN Restaurant, Kansas City, MO, Competing for Harvesters

Sue Zemanick - Executive Chef: Gautreau’s, New Orleans, LA; Competing for the Louisiana SPCA