"Padma" news and stories

Bravo's Top Chef has cooked up a Restaurant Finder website.

Who better to tell you where to eat than the Top Chef chefs? You can type in the cuisine you desire and a city to get listings and reviews, or browse each chef's personal picks!

Some restaurants are recommended by multiple chefs, like Alinea in Chicago, which is recommended by Stephen, Radhika, Harold, and Tre. Their plugs for the restaurant even include "must eat" items. That's right. Top Chef even tells you what to order!

Stop bossing us around, Top Chef, jeez.

The new season of Bravo's Top Chef begins next Wednesday, November 12th, at 10/9 Central, and features new judge Toby Young, food critic and best-selling author of the book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

More info here at BravoTV.com.

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(Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!)

Just like Nikki's blueberry-stuffed mushrooms, last night's episode of Top Chef was forgettable. We all guessed that Valerie would be sent home during the first three minutes of the show, when she received a disproportionate amount of airtime to discuss her friendship with competitor Stephanie. Why does the editing always give it away? (I know, I know: We get to know her and then feel sad when she leaves, yawn). So there weren't many surprises, but there's still plenty to discuss.

Welcome to the first installment of the Slashfood Top Chef recapped, a regular post that I'll be writing following each episode this season (barring any Tivo emergencies). I love Top Chef and tend to get really into it, so the posts will likely feature my own completely biased but hopefully interesting commentary, and I'd really like for them to serve as a jumping point for everyone to discuss favorites, who's hot (Padma), who's lame, etc. So let's begin with the first episode.

First things first: lesbian couple on the show! I'm totally rooting for them, and consequently rooting against Spike, who seemed most uncomfortable with the idea. It's unclear whether more gay contestants will be revealed later, but I wouldn't be surprised. One member of the couple, Jennifer sports the same hairstyle as Richard, and both clearly knock-off last season's Dale. Richard noticed = major drama (I wish). Seriously though, there is some major girl power this season and I love it.

On to the food. The deep-dish pizza Quickfire Challenge was an obvious but fitting choice, given the Chicago setting. That said, I wasn't too impressed with the pizzas that the contestants conjured. Dale, who is already establishing himself as the confident, out-to-get-you Hung of this season, put it only slightly too harshly when he said that everyone else's dishes looked horrible. The only one I would have been really interested to taste was Richard's with peaches and syrup.

I'll preface this by saying that we won't be held responsible if any of these turn out to be false, but let's discuss a couple of the Top Chef rumors that we heard this week - because what fun are reality show participants if you can't talk about them once in a while?

A friend, recently returned from Las Vegas and "one of the best meals of [her] life" at Tom Colicchio's restaurant, Craftsteak, reported that her waiter said Elia was recruited for the show and never intended to audition in the first place. In this case, the friend is a reliable source, but how the waiter from the restaurant got the information is something we'll never know.

An irate "fan" of Top Chef physically assaulted Marcel in a Las Vegas nightclub by hitting him with a bottle. Marcel needed 30 stitches to close up the cut above his eye. Totally uncalled for - not to mention highly disturbing.

Ilan Hall, who is one of the two chefs to make it into the final cookoff, has quit his job as a line cook at Mario Batali's New York eatery, Casa Mono. As we all known Ilan only knows Spanish food - what will he do now? Could this be an indicator of how things turned out for him in the finale - good or bad?

On-set spies say that Padma might have the munchies, explaining the former model's seemingly large appetite.

Want to know what former contestant Sam Talbot eats in a week?