"Richard Branson" news and stories

We have to admit, it's been a rocky season. At first, we weren't quite sure if we were invested in the notion of "all star" cheftestants from seven seasons of our favorite cooking competition show. Many of these folks weren't tops among their season -- would the hunger to win be there? Would the competitive, overconfident, back-stabbing spirit thrive?

But as we settled in with a big glass of wine for the finale -- watching Richard Blais futz around with a gigantic canister of liquid nitrogen, Mike Isabella hone his super-rustic Italian flavors, and Padma fumble around with some awkward "live" interludes from the finale afterparty -- we got that warm, fuzzy Top Chef feeling just like we do during the best seasons, and realized just how far all our friends had come this year.

You see, at first, we weren't quite sure if the stakes were high enough, what with Jen's early-season walk-off, weeks of Jamie's "who gives a crap" performance, and Fabio's oh-so-canned judge flirting. And then the proverbial almost-ran chaff fell away from the Top Chef wheat, leaving only the ones who were in it to win it -- and that's when things got really interesting. Carla proved not only to be the mega-entertaining ex-model personality we knew her to be but also a stunning purveyor of comfort food. Antonia shone as a competitor worthy of being with the best (and, in a plot twist straight out of a soap opera, ended up being Mike's cousin!).

Luckily, some of those awesome finalists at least got to be sous-chefs for the finale, although the method for choosing them was a bit unorthodox: Each eliminated All Star had to make a dish for Richard and Mike to blindly taste. Though the matching dishes to their creators was fun (no one got who they expected!), in the end, the sous-chefs ended up playing less of a part than they have in previous seasons, save for Carla's slight overcooking of Mike's dessert, and Spike's invaluable -- if totally unsubtle -- reconnaissance work for Richard ("Thomas Keller loved it!").

Remember that godawful Virgin food I showed you the other day, and the creative letter written to complain about it? Well, it looks like if you make something entertaining enough that it spreads like wildfire through the Internet, you may just get a response.

The Consumerist reports that Virgin Atlantic have invited the unhappy passenger to "come to the airline's catering house next month, to help select the food on future Virgin flights." As Consumerist says, this is definitely a publicity stunt and not the best "gift" for their passenger.

Think about it. People are choosing this food. I'd bet my bottom dollar that the food they pick isn't quite what what ends up on the passenger's tiny table, because who would pick slop that looked like that anyway? Now give him the option to help choose the dinners and police the airline every few months for quality control purposes? That would be a sweet gig.

We all know the horrors of plane food. Personally, I don't even know how many times I've ridden on a plane, but only once -- just once -- did I get a meal worth remembering. Even so, it never inspired me to do something about it. Like many others, I sucked it up, or stuffed my bag with bagels and tasty things pre-flight.

But not everyone can take it lying down, and there's an excellent new passenger letter swimming its way across the internet, which you can read over at the Telegraph. Basically, the anonymous writer calls Richard Branson out on the food served during Virgin flights. And I must say, it's pretty terrible-looking food (look up, that's mustard slopped over most of the middle). These pictures are so bad, they make those chewy, plasticy microwaved pizzas look delectable.

What a great advertisement for Gordon Ramsay's gourmet plane food!