"Ludo Lefebvre" news and stories

• If you've bought an ice cream cone recently, you may have experienced a little sticker shock.
• As long as we're on the subject, have you had egg-free ice cream lately?
• L.A. has been taken over by guerillas -- in the form of LudoBites, and they like it.
• California Chardonnays aren't what they once were, and for some people that's a good thing.
• Tamarind Tribeca takes you from Punjab to Madras to Calcutta.

• Meet the former Top Chef Masters cheftestant responsible for L.A.'s groundbreaking "pop-up" restaurant.
• Deborah Madison's latest cookbook focuses on the sweeter side of life.
• The new Culina restaurant at the Four Seasons plays it safe. Maybe a little too safe.
• Why Oumi Sasaya is right out there on the edge -- and the results are transcendent.
• Today's recipe: mixed berry crostata. (You're welcome.)

Ludo, Ludo, Ludo. As long as the programming savants at Bravo are going to spin off every one of their reality franchises into at least 31 flavors, can we have a Top Chef Ludo, already?

Not that we love the guy, exactly, mind you -- we love hating him, and hate it when we end up loving him. In his second appearance in the inner sanctum of Top Chef Masters -- the first was last year, when he made some offal tacos for tourists -- Ludovic Lefebvre, the Paris-by-way-of-SoCal enfant terrible, managed to astound, confound, infuriate and otherwise entertain anyone unfortunate enough to be in his blazing path of culinary genius.

To judge by Ludo's opinion of himself, "culinary genius" is an understatement. Granted, the man has worked wonders with his LudoBites, his roving, temporary restaurant concept that has delivered chilled liquid-chorizo and other inventions to L.A. denizens for a couple of years now, so any amount of bluster is at least a little justified.

More from last night's episode after the jump.

Chef Anita Lo. Photo: Bravo TV.

Now things get ugly. We've been waiting all season for something to break the respectful, civilized, almost comically cordial spell cast by the "Top Chef Masters" assortment of celebrity chefs, each gingerly battling the other for a claim to Bravo-endorsed superiority (not to mention a philanthropic sack full of Lexus-supplied charity cash). In Wednesday night's first round of finals, the cloud of cheery camaraderie seemed to have finally lifted.

It wasn't the chefs who removed their gloves -- or mitts, to be more appropriate -- but rather, the folks behind the scenes. From the quickfire challenge to the judges' table, the six chefs who've made it this far were subjected to a grueling, baffling psychological experiment the likes of which we haven't seen since the Skinner box.

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But right from the start, something was off-kilter. Even host Kelly Choi's usual preschool-teacher diction took on a tinge of deviousness as she announced that each chef would be asked to prepare his or her "sig-na-ture dish," making sure to linger on every syllable.