"bravo tv" news and stories

We're already dreaming of the challenges: Whip up some hors d'oeuvres for 100 drunken lobbyists. Design a five-course menu inspired by and served at the Watergate Hotel ("Deep Throat" ceviche, anyone?). Team up to make an entree using only cherry blossoms.

That's right -- in what has to be one of the worst-kept secrets in a city full of them, all signs point to the nation's capital as the shooting location for the seventh season of Bravo's Top Chef.

The Countess. Padma. Tabatha. If you're on a first name basis with these gals, chances are you're a Bravo junkie (like us). The cable channel just announced a new slate of shows in production and it sounds like they're going to pull us back into their clutches yet again.

In development is 'Around the World in 80 Plates.' Contestants fly around the globe to test their culinary skills in some of the world's most famous restaurants. (We're pretty sure El Bulli and The Fat Duck are getting called right now.) Of course the contestants have to adapt to local cultures and food tastes.

When the casserole thickens, the plot thins. Or at least that's how it's beginning to seem on "Chef Academy," Bravo's one stop shop for midlife crises, psychosomatic illnesses and, every so often, fabulous French cuisine.

Against our better judgment -- and lack of anything better to do, now that Top Chef is over -- we've been watching this strange amalgam of "Hell's Kitchen" and "The Real World," waiting for something, anything, to pique our interest.

Barring that, it would be nice, seven episodes in, for the usually foaming-at-the-mouth Chef Jean Christophe Novelli to live up to his image as a plate throwing, Pepe Le Pew-sounding tyrant and actually flunk one of his nine misfit pupils, as he's been threatening to do for weeks.

And now, as if to reward us for our inexplicable patience, Bravo is dumping the last four episodes into our living rooms, two a piece, this week and next. And if -- spoiler alert -- they still haven't managed to kick anyone off the show (something tells us these "amateurs" all signed full-season contracts), at least things are finally getting interesting.

Photo: Amazon

'Top Chef - The Quickfire Cookbook'
by Emily Miller with foreword by Padma Lakshmi
Chronicle Books -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

It's Padma's world. The rest of us just cook in it -- just mostly without a gigantic LED countdown clock, a dozen cleaver-wielding competitors jockeying for prep space and a mandate to make haute nibbles from the contents of a 7-Eleven's snack aisle. But if that's what cremes your brulee and you haven't the tats, 'tude and temerity to audition for competitive reality TV, you can live vicariously through this book.

Or you can just go online and save the $29.95.

See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Do you have what it takes to master this Top Chef quiz? Or will you be asked to pack your knives and go? Find out below.