We mentioned yesterday that Top Chef winner Kevin Sbraga was set to open his first restaurant, Sbraga, in Philadelphia this Saturday. The 440 South Broad Street spot will be a “modern American restaurant” featuring a $45 prix fixe menu we detailed yesterday, including deserts made by the chef’s wife, Pastry Chef Jesmary Sbraga. We sent out own Madeline Bates down there today to check out the 65-seat dining room as they make preparations for the doors to open this weekend. Check out more of her images after the jump.

Reservations are currently being accepted.

[All Photos by Madeline P Bates]

According to a press release:

Some opening menu items will include: Eggplant Terrine with black garlic and jalapeno; Frisée with creamy gorgonzola and pomegranate; Foie Gras Soup with a rose petal relish; Black Cod served with bok choy and kim chee; Fish and Chips with an Indian remoulade; Clams with orecchiette and fennel; Arctic Char with a béarnaise sauce and celery root; Meatloaf with royal trumpet mushrooms, mashed potatoes and a bacon marmalade; Chicken with sautéed Brussels sprouts and candied sweet potatoes; Lamb with broccoli and sesame granola; Mascarpone Mousse with coffee granita; and Apples with caramel and mille-feuille.

Sbraga is located at 440 South Broad Street and we’ll have pictures of the new place and more information tomorrow.

Open Table is celebrating the premiere of Top Chef Just Desserts with free dessert day! Just make online reservations at one of the places listed here for Wednesday, September 15. You will receive a free dessert for every 2 diners at your table and all each person has to do is order a minimum of one entree. Sweet deal.

Fork, 306 Market St. (215) 625-9425

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.

Join us each week as we share our thoughts on the previous nights episode of Top Chef: Las Vegas. One of our Philly compatriots was already eliminated, but we will be watching closely as Jenn Carol from 10Arts competes for the top prize.

This week’s elimination challenge was to cook something yummy with a bunch of prickly cacti. Cactus can be delicious if prepared correctly, but it seemed as though most of the chefs had no familiarity with the ingredient. Some tried to incorporate it into their usual recipes, while others guessed at how to even make it edible. Mike ended up winning, as it seemed he was the only contestant that understood the vital role of salt in preparing his dish.

After being told about their elimination challenge, and picking up their groceries, the crew was driven to the desert and left to sleep in an open field in a bunch of teepees. While it was quite entertaining to see a bunch of city-slicker chefs roughing it out in the wild, we are still not clear how this particular experience is helping us pick the best chef out of the bunch. Anyhoo, the next day after sleeping outside, the gang has to prepare food for a bunch of Vegas-style cowboys in like one-million degree weather. The weirdest thing is that there was so much fish. Dry hot land for as far as the eye can see, and everyone is serving fish. It made no sense with seared halibut, four different kinds of ceviche, and shrimp. Like the old lady said, wheres the beef? The judges seemed a bit stunned, but a winner had to be chosen regardless. One of those bros ended up winning. Several weeks in and we still can’t tell them apart. Our girl Jen C was not a major player this week, but she is still in it!

Episode 2: Bachelor/ette Party: This week, the Quickfire Challenge’s most memorable moment came when one of the hot Volt Brothers (we still can’t tell them apart) decided liquid nitrogen would be just the tool for perfecting his gazpacho. The video above is an extra in which His Hottness explains exactly how to make it. Cause, ya know, we all have tanks of liquid N around the kitchen for just such moments.

Moving on to the elimination challenge, the judges provoke the contestants by making the men and women compete for the win by making some h’or dourves paired with shots for a bachelor/bachelorette party. Shots, dude! Vegas! All of this made for some very unhappy lesbians – Prop 8 lingering in the air like a recent death in the family — but they still did their best and came up with some interesting combinations and what looked like creative dishes. The problem we have with this show, even after several seasons of viewing, is that it is impossible to judge for yourself. We see them making the food, we hear what the judges have to say, but without actually putting the food in our mouths, it is kind of impossible to have an opinion. On this episode, it was even more difficult, as there are still like a million contestants and they all kinda mush together in our brains. Anyway, the boys won, gay marriage should be legal and those shots looked kinda nasty.

So far we are really liking Beardo, the curly haired jewish dude who wore shorts last week, and the chick from Philly who should probably work on her accent. You are on TV, sweetie, spend a couple extra minutes trying to annunciate. Tune in for our recap next week, it looks like people are fighting.

As you no doubt know, Jennifer Zavala (she of Philly’s Xochitl and before that, El Camino Real) was the first contestant to be unceremoniously booted from Top Chef: Las Vegas last week. (Pardon us for being a little late to the game on this one; we’ll have a wrap-up on last night’s episode a little later today.) Zavala’s crime? Serving Wolfgang Puck seitan. Which gets to the heart of something we’ve noticed since this blog started up: Lots of hardcore phoodie types are secretly racist against vegan foods, especially when given the chance to have something meatier. Now, sure, we can all attest to the amazing things that can be done with seitan and tofu — Horizons, anyone? — so maybe it’s better to say that Zavala’s crime, more aptly put, was “serving Wolfgang Puck seitan when she could have very easily served him something dead.” But this is the food world. Jen Z., on some level, had to know this, even if it is also true that seitan can be goddamned delicious. None of that worries us nearly as much as the video above, posted on Bravo, which reveals that Jen Z. is STILL IN VEGAS (like guests, Vegas smells rotten after three days), and worse still, she is STILL UPSET ABOUT THIS SEITAN BUSINESS. To which we say: Honey, come home. Your city needs you. And Philadelphia is not like Top Chef: Here, you get a gazillion chances because we are fuck-ups. Sometimes, this can be a good thing.