Like you haven’t had it on your Google calendar for weeks: Every snarky Phoodie’s favorite culinary competition/egofest, Top Chef, returns to Bravo tonight at 9, and don’t pretend you’re not all planning your entire evening around the Season 7 premiere. This time the “Cheftestants” (we know, we know) convene in our nation’s capital for some reason, most likely to take advantage of whatever Yay America puns the desperate, underpaid Bravo interns can come up with. To augment the reality TV brand of patriotic corniness, Bravo has peppered episodes with typical stunt casting, including (recent 30 Rock guest star!) Buzz Aldrin, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and MSNBC blowhard Joe Scarborough. Returning as judges are the always lovely (if drowsy seeming) Padma Lakshmi, food world bigwig/tv star Tom Colicchio (what? he shills for Coca-Cola and appeared on Treme a few weeks ago…), and delightful mega-harpy Gail Simmons.
After the jump, some highlights from chef bios, and our early fan fave picks, based purely on the shallowest possible criteria.
- What’s up with the Peas, please? Out of 17 chefs, four list their favorite recipes as ones containing peas or “anything with peas,” and three say the same for asparagus. Are peas and asparagus the new things these days?
- We have two chefs sporting Philly cred this time around. Lynne Gigliotti (whose age is listed as 51 but doesn’t look even close to that – we’ll have what she’s having), whose hometown is Philadelphia, now lives in Highland, NY and is an Assistant Professor at the Culinary Institute of America. Kevin Sbraga who is originally from Willingboro, NJ, worked as Chef de Cuisine at The Grill at the Ritz Carlton in Philly, was listed as a Top 10 Chef by Philadelphia Style magazine in 2007, and served as Culinary Director at Garces Restaurant Group in 2008. Needless to say, we’ll root for these two as long as they’re around or until they make something that sounds or looks really gross.
- Our pick for first eliminated chef: One Tracey Bloom. Bloom’s bio says her last meal on earth would be with Stevie Nicks and that she would serve turkey salad and homemade lemonade. I mean, come on.
-Our pick for potential homo-tastic moments: Arnold Myint. He hails from Nashville, and owns three restaurants there, one of which is called Suzy Wong’s House of Yum. Myint, a former figure skater, “has been known to appear as Suzy Wong herself” at the so-named restaurant. Does this mean he’s a ‘mo, Philly gays? We know not – watch his bio video and you tell us.
- Our pick for The Weird Chef Nobody Likes: John Sommerville. Take a look. We’re not wrong.
Top Chef D.C. premiers tonight at 9pm on Bravo.
I’ve been to the House of Yum in Nashville, and it is located directly next to a gay bar. In fact, when the bathroom at the restaurant was occupied, we were directed through to the gay bar- they’re physically connected. The food was awesome, I’ll be rooting for Myint.