Padma, Gail, Tom, Mark Peel and the troops. Photo: Bravo

Note to "Top Chef" editors: You fooled us. As with any reality show with a dozen-plus contestants, the ones who get the most face time in the early episodes are usually the superstars, or the ones who'll be packing their knives and going home.

By that logic, perma-cryer Jesse -- who managed the ignominious feat of having the lowest scores in the previous two episodes -- was marked for doom this week. But at least she owned her status -- or lack of it -- as the loser of last night's quickfire challenge: "I'm on the bottom again -- balls!"

Brian Boitano at breakfast. Photo: Food Network

So pop culture has come to this: A former figure skater perhaps best known for being a goofily ironic punchline to a "South Park" song has his own show -- and it's a cooking show. Die-hard foodies, take note: "What Would Brian Boitano Make?" is not for you.

This is not to say it operates at Sandra Lee levels of non-cooking: At no point does Brian (whom we interviewed) crack open a packet of supermarket taco seasoning for some zing or create a lush tablescape out of freshly raked autumn leaves. But it is, shall we say, a little on the frothy side for anyone wanting to learn the proper way to braise a quail. (Though the guy sure knows how to strain his juices for a mango-tini.)

No, this is one of those "lifestyle" shows the Food Network is so adept at churning out -- more tailored to the host's persona and his or her niche than anything else. And to judge by the first episode, Brian's self-professed niche would be San Franciscan guys who like to entertain their single girlfriends, prepare fussy little crudités and "ride bikes on rainbows!"

Classic French drinks at Brooklyn's Bastille Day. Photo: Alex Van Buren

Bastille Day is tomorrow, but in New York City the party started as it so often does -- early. From an uptown street fair in Manhattan featuring the decadent pastries of Francois Payard to a boozy, New Orleans-like outdoor fete on Smith Street (often called Brooklyn's Restaurant Row), the city was awash in stripes of red, white and blue.

Those wondering how to pay homage to that long-ago storming of the Bastille prison via gastronomical decisions tomorrow, not to worry: We've got a classic Provençal recipe and a few Francophilic cocktail ideas coming your way tomorrow.

Meantime, after the jump, a recap of the Brooklyn event (more pictures here) from moules frites to the peculiar triumph of anise-tinged Ricard.

Season 5 of Top Chef premiered last night on Bravo, and I have the enviable task of recapping each episode for everyone's favorite foodie blog: Slashfood. A word of warning for all you folks out there that haven't watched this episode yet, here there be spoilers.

The producers of this season's Top Chef have made it clear that this is the most difficult season of Top Chef ever, and it is being filmed in the toughest city around: New York. This season's contestants meet each other for the first time in a variety of New York locales (just to make sure that you know they are, in fact, in New York City) and introduce themselves, I try not to get attached to any one chef until at least episode 6 (you never know when someone will be eliminated).

Soon enough the contestants find themselves on a ferry to Governor's Island where Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio wait with this season's first Quick Fire challenge.

Read on for more Top Chef details after the jump.

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.

The end of the season for a show like Bravo's Top Chef is always bittersweet. Like a good chocolate, you want to finish it off, but you also sort of wish that it could go on. Come to think of it, this season might be more like the "finishing off" chocolate, since there has been so much drama that it will almost be a relief to see it end. Almost.

Last night was the first part of the show's season finale and it started off by giving viewers a sneak peek into what the chefs have been doing for the past few months during the break between the main taping and the filming of the finale. Marcel and Sam spent the time practicing their technique, with Marcel trying to learn as much as possible about new ingredients and presentations and Sam learning about pastry, which he felt was a weak spot in his training. Elia and Ilan each spent time learning about Hawaiian food, but neither actively tried to learn as much new information as their competitors.

After the high level of drama last week on Bravo's Top Chef, it was a relief to see the chefs acting a bit less aggressively, though the tension was clearly still present. Marcel is a bit of an outcast from the men's apartment because the other guys, with the possible exception of Michael who is so laid back that he is probably just going with the crowd because it is the easiest thing to do, dislike him so much. He spent a bit of time on the roof of the building at the beginning of the episode composing a little rap/poem to try and clear his mind and enable himself to focus. He wasn't the only one trying to buckle down at this point. Elia is the only woman still cooking in this competition and she clearly wants to win it.

The competition kicked off with the quickfire challenge. This week, the chefs had to come up with a Kraft Gourmet Snack, a snack/small plate that used either mayonnaise, Italian dressing or BBQ sauce in some way. There was a bit of grumbling, primarily about the prospect of using mayo in a dish, but the chefs put out some impressive combinations in just 30 minutes.

New year, new episode of Bravo's Top Chef. The season picked up again this week with only seven of the original fifteen competitors still in the competition. At this point, the chefs have been living together for several weeks and, as in many situations where you have a group of type-A personalities, things are getting a little tense. Everyone in the group seems to oscillate back and forth between feeling compelled to act as a team trying to screw over everyone else so that they, as individuals, can get ahead. It makes things more interesting from a dramatic standpoint, but the chefs really need to get a grip on their tempers if they want to end up as Top Chef.

As the episode started out, one of the first things that we got to see was that Michael had a wisdom tooth pulled. He made it sound like he went to a less-than-reputable individual for the procedure, but seemed to be getting along fine aside from the pain and swelling. Medicated, Michael was much less feisty than usual. He noted that he hoped the challenges weren't too long and the rest of the tired-looking competitors agreed.

Finally! Bravo's Top Chef was back on schedule with a new episode this week and now that the show had only nine chefs, there was more individual coverage of each one and we got to see everyone's dishes, which was sometimes a bit of a problem early in the season, especially with the quickfire challenges.

The theme of this week's episode was Raw and Cooked and the underlying theme seemed to be about technology and what chefs could do when there wasn't a lot of it around. For the quickfire challenge, the chefs were taken down to the Redondo Beach Farmer's Market and told that they had to create a mouthwatering, filling dish using entirely raw ingredients. They had a budget of $20 to spend at the marked and were then given 30 minutes in the kitchen to "cook" their food. They were also introduced to the guest judge, Raphael Lunetta, the chef at Jiraffe.

When you were in school and didn't get along with someone, parents and teaches probably told you that in the "real world" you have to try to get along with people you don't like because you often have to work with them no matter what your personal feelings are. Reality TV might not exactly be the "real" world, but it is becoming more clear that not all of the contestants had this lesson when they were growing up. On this week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef, the camera spent a lot of time on the personal interactions of the cooks, as well as filming the cooking itself.

This was a Thanksgiving themed episode, so it was particularly appropriate for this week despite the fact that it was probably filmed earlier this summer. For the quickfire challenge, chef Tom Colicchio served as the judge and the contestants were given only 15 minutes to create a "tasty" dish using three different canned ingredients. There was no time for anyone to utter more than one or two words of complaint as everyone got down to cooking.

If you recall from last week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef, there was no elimination and the chefs were told that they were going to be on probation. Some of the contestants may have been bending the rules about what ingredients they could use in the kitchen, not to mention the lapses in judgment made by chefs in earlier episodes, and others were suspicious enough to create a very tense situation that even the judges couldn't resolve quickly. As such, the chefs in this episode were all on parole, which meant that Tom Colicchio stayed in the kitchen to supervise. The result was that we got to see his reactions to the dishes much more clearly, though the chefs did not seem to be too affected by his presence.

This punishment, of sorts, was leftover from the previous week and coincidentally, the theme of this episode was also leftovers. Don't get too excited, though. The odds are that nothing they made would work out with the leftovers from Thanksgiving next week.

This week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef introduced a couple of elements that we saw a lot of last season: junk food and kids. The two did not really tie in together, but it was interesting to see how this season's competitors responded to these challenges, as compared with the last group of potential Top Chefs.

Junk food came in to play during the quickfire challenge, where the chefs were allowed to pick a total of four items from two vending machines as the ingredients to prepare an amuse bouche. The guest judge for this episode was Susanna Goin, the head chef of Lucques and AOC in Los Angeles. She is known for simple, yet innovative, dishes, so she was a good choice as a judge to evaluate what the chefs could do with relatively common "ingredients."

Judging from the promos that we aired in the week leading up to this week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef, the show promised to be a good one. Then again, what reality show doesn't heavily advertise the conflicts that cast members have? At least we are starting to get to know all the competitors better and can pick out some of the chefs that seem to be leading the pack.

The chefs had a hard time with this week's quickfire challenge. Padma started out by saying that only 38% of Americans eat in fine dining restaurants at that it is important for a top chef to be well rounded and able to cater to different audiences. Their challenge was to create an original ice cream flavor to be served to beach-goers in Los Angeles. With the exception of the pastry chef, Marissa, no one seemed to have ever made ice cream before, but after seeing some of the flavor combinations, you would have thought that they had never eaten ice cream before, either.

Only one week into season two of Bravo's Top Chef and things are already getting a lot more interesting, primarily because we are getting to know the players a little bit better. The honeymoon seemed to wear off quickly, as at the start of the show everyone agreed that they really felt like they were in a competition now that someone had been asked to pack their knives and go.

This week, things started off as usual with a quickfire challenge, though this one required a 4:30 am wakeup call. All the chefs headed off to the Los Angeles fish market where they were given $100 to pick out fish for sushi. Once they returned to the kitchen, they were given 30 minutes to prepare a dish for the guest judge, Chef Hiroshi Shima, an expert in the field.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I was a big fan of the first season of Bravo's Top Chef, the culinary competition that had drama, laughs and - most importantly - food. It was such a success that the network decided to film a second season. Next week, on October 18th, Top Chef Season 2 will premier with a new host, Padma Lakshmi, and a whole new cast.

The competitors in the first round were good, and a few were even great, but as with most reality shows that require some degree of skill or talent, the participants tend to get a little bit better in each round. Of course, along with the talent comes the drama, as producers get better at finding people who will create some conflict, though it will be hard to top the Tiffani/Dave drama from last season.

Is anyone else looking forward to the show? Don't forget that if you miss an episode, I'll be doing a recap right here on the following day!