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Throw Another Two Chefs on the Barbie: 'Top Chef All-Stars'

Top Chef 01-12-11 Carla and DalePhoto: Giovanni Rufino / Bravo


Still reeling from the Great Dim Sum Fiasco of the Century, this week found our not-so-chivalrous cheftestants getting on each other nerves. Or talking about each other behind their backs. Or, in the case of Marcel, getting all up in Dale's face with a bunch of weird flailing motions that made him look like a Beastie Boy, circa 1988.

Maybe Marcel's rant was motivated by a genuine sense of injustice about making a lot of food for his diners and merely winning runner-up. Or, as Tre put it more succinctly, maybe he's just "an a--hole." In any event, tensions were high this week: Two chefs were going home. And after getting up at the crack of dawn, spending all day off Montauk Point in fishing boats, and returning to the beach to cook with the sand in between their toes and the sun in their eyes (cry us a river, Jamie), the chefs were visibly haggard.

Forgoing the usual quickfire for some team fishing (major revelations: Angelo is still traumatized from watching Jaws as a child; Mike likes to fart at sea), the chefs were separated into teams and told to cook only the Atlantic treasure trove they caught. But this challenge proved that there truly can be an "I" in team, as the chefs worked together about as well as a bunch of junior-high brainiacs competing for one trophy at a science fair.

Spoiler Alert: Winners and losers are revealed after the jump.
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Filed under: Television/Film, Celebrities

Chatting with the Latest "Top Chef All-Stars" Exile

Top Chef eliminated chef 01-05-11Photo: Barbara Nitke / Bravo


Here's this week's installment of Slashfood's exclusive exit interviews with the latest "Top Chef All-Stars" contestant to get the boot. In an effort to prevent spoilers, we've included the text after the jump.
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Filed under: Television/Film, Chefs

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Fiddling Around with 'Diddlies' and Dim Sum -- 'Top Chef All-Stars'

Top Chef Jan 5 2011Photo: Barbara Nitke / Bravo


Here's where things get really wacky. Now that the stakes are sufficiently high (talented chefs sent home!) and the challenges have gotten progressively more bizarrely creative (tennis cook-offs!), you get the sense that the All-Stars who have made it this far are, well, cracking a little.

First it was the fact that they all had to compete against their "daddy" (more on that term of endearment later), Tom Colicchio, trying to beat his 8-minute entrée time for a high-stakes quickfire. In case you're wondering, the keys to besting Tom's speed in the kitchen are: Beg, borrow or steal some quick-cooking fish, and don't screw up the sauce. This meant Mike's branzino was seared to perfection, while Dale's attempt to do a pad thai -- well, it looked like one thick shoelace in a puddle of urine. And he admitted as much.

Then there was the now-patented "night before elimination challenge" montage, which in this case involved lots of bra-throwing, jalepeño juice in in the eyes, and the repelling of all of the boys back to their rooms. None of the women could understand why the chefs of the less-fair sex could "fiddle around with their diddlies" whenever they wanted, while one errant bra could produce a stampede.

There was good reason for all of the nervous nuttiness. These very Western chefs were assigned a daunting task: Cook dim sum for a room full of hungry New York City Asian-Americans. And the problem, it turned out, wasn't so much that they couldn't master the cuisine -- some of them did so splendidly -- but that they couldn't stop fussing over their little plates to get them out to the hungry diners.

Spoiler Alert: Read on only if you want to know the outcome of this "All-Stars" episode.
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Filed under: Television/Film, Celebrities

Chatting with the Latest 'Top Chef' All-Stars' Exile

Photo: Barbara Nitke / Bravo


Slashfood's exclusive exit interviews with the latest Top Chef All-Stars contestant to get the boot. In an effort to prevent spoilers, we've included the text after the jump.
Continue Reading

Filed under: Television/Film

To Serve, Volley and Sabotage - 'Top Chef All-Stars'

Photo: Barbara Nitke / Bravo


At this point, is no one safe? When you sit down to watch something called Top Chef All-Stars, you might expect, well, nothing but stars -- the near-misses, the controversial favorites, the ones who should've won but didn't. But right off the bat, our friends at Bravo seemed to be stacking the deck. After all, the show wasn't called Top Chef: Missed It by This Much for good reason:The producers assembled not a sure-fire troupe of culinary geniuses, but a motley crew of fan favorites and outsized personalities bearing all levels of talent. Stephen? Tre? Really? Even Tiffany (the one without the "i") -- we love you, but you're swimming with the big fish now, and, quite frankly, we're not sure you measure up.

So when it comes to the outwardly talented, accomplished chefs, the ones you thought were shoo-ins from the beginning, All Stars has turned out to be something of a stealth serial killer. Sure, the insufferable Stephen and his ascots are gone, but so are Jen (So much promise! So little confidence!) and Dale Levitsky (Too much confidence! Too many ideas!). It's these fatal flaws, it seems, that are separating the talented strivers from the play-it-safe pedestrians. And as long as the show keeps putting them all through the ringer the way they have on the first four episodes, the strivers are only going to continue to suffer.

Nowhere was this more apparent than this week's weirdly themed, oddly unseasonal and totally sadistic US Open team challenge, in which the scoring managed to be as baffling -- and the emotions as overstated as John McEnroe's -- but the performances ended up being weirdly un-tennislike.

Spoiler alert: If you don't want to know who won or lost, don't read past the jump.
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Filed under: Television/Film, Celebrities

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