"bravotv" 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.

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.

In uncertain times, we count on simple pleasures: Home cooking, unemployment checks and the heady mix of ego, chutzpah and alcohol-fueled drama we have come to anticipate from "Top Chef."

So when Bravo announced that "Top Chef Masters," the show's latest iteration (hosted by Kelly Choi, right), would be given over to established culinary superstars, fans had reason to worry: Would decorum and professionalism win out over brash experimentation? Would upstart bickering be replaced by upper-crust camaraderie? Would the fauxhawk go the way of the dodo?

The answer after the inaugural hour is a qualified "yes." But what "Top Chef Masters" loses in amateur hour enthusiasm it gains in hyper-astute commentary. It is a knowing look at what it means to be a celebrity chef in an era when celebrity chefs are often made overnight on cable TV. Every week, by stripping four different "masters" of their sous chefs, sommeliers and Cuisinarts -- in one instance forcing them to make do with nothing more than a dorm room's toaster oven, microwave and hot plate -- it resets the bar for gourmet ingenuity.

Read on to learn about the Girl Scout mafia's dessert tastes and prosciutto-popcorn risotto.