"television" news and stories

Top Chef judges Toby, Padma, Tom and Gail. Photo: Bravo TV.

Chef-testants for season six of Top Chef were announced today. The showdown will take place in Las Vegas, which Tom Colicchio assures us is a "very serious food town."

The primary thing a bunch of these newbies have in common? Tattoos, big time. Click through the gallery and let us know if we're wrong. That's not to say we don't spy some serious contenders in the mix. Talent ranges from Michael Voltaggio, chef de cuisine of the buzzed-about José Andrés Bazaar in Los Angeles, to the innocuous-looking (but perhaps culinarily ferocious) Jesse Sandlin, one of the tattooed toques, who sports a flower in her hair.

Don't skip the video of our four judges, in which Gail declares, "I'm eating very well," and Padma asserts, "A few of these contestants have even taught Tom a thing or two." Hmm. We'll see.

Are you stoked about Top Chef Vegas -- or are you over it by now?

It's amazing what a couple of rabbit ears will pick up, and it pays to do a little futzing around with the remote to sample the bevy of weird and wonderful channels and sub-channels blazing through the airwaves in all their pixelated glory.

Case in point: "The Dotch Cooking Show." This little gem of Japanese pop culture may have ended in 2007, but it lives on thanks to Los Angeles' KSCI-TV channel 18.2 -- not to mention online, in countless YouTube clips and less-than-legal downloads.

America's cook-off shows seem downright sleep-inducing by comparison. As TV spectacles go, Dotch occupies a space somewhere between the loose, tipsy fun of the celebrity-studded '70s staple "The Match Game" and the free-wheeling nuttiness of "Peewee's Playhouse."

Love her or hate her, Sandra Lee can stretch a dollar.

For her latest Food Network show, the queen of "semi-homemade" cuisine is teaching her viewers "Money Saving Meals" with tips on how to make dishes like this French toast without breaking the bank.

"This show is like Suze Orman meets Julia Child," she told Slashfood Thursday in the Food Network test kitchens.

Get her three tips on how to save at the grocery store and the French toast recipe after the jump.

Tomorrow night on Top Chef, Gail Simmons has a special surprise for the Chef'testants. She's throwing her girlfriend a bridal shower and they are cooking!

Creating a menu around the old maxim:

Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue
And a silver sixpence in her shoe.

... should be no trouble for the teams (Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue ... where's Sixpence?).

The only problem is, some of them don't look too excited to be Gail Simmons' personal chefs. Isn't this supposed to be a competition, not a service?

The episode airs tomorrow night, Wednesday, December 10th, at 10/9c on Bravo with guest judge Dana Cowin, Editor-in-Chief of Food & Wine Magazine.

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On more nights than I'd like to admit, Scott and I succumb to the blue flicker of the television screen while eating dining. We park ourselves on the couch with our plates and watch Jeopardy or reruns of The Daily Show. But when we go out to eat, we avoid places with TVs, knowing that we get plenty of tube viewing time in at home.

However, CBS has recently opened a restaurant where the point is to watch television while you eat. Over the weekend, they opened a 15,000-square-foot restaurant that will serve upscale pub food and will prominently feature approximately 130 high-definition televisions. Included in that number are table-side flat-screens programmed with CBS content, so that you can choose from 60 years worth of CBS programming while you dine.

The restaurant, called CBS Scene, has been opened in partnership with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and is located in Foxborough, MA, adjacent to Gillette Stadium. Video about the new restaurant is after the jump (it starts playing as soon as you open the page).

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