"top chef reunion" news and stories

Some relationships -- even the ones that only last a few months -- are so intense you can't stop reliving them. You obsess over them, replay them back in your mind, wondering if somehow, some way, things could've have turned out differently.

The same could be said of "Top Chef." What if everyone had been nice to the long-surviving, "flying under the radar" Robin? What if sentimental fave Kevin had quit the show after his rare-lamb Restaurant Wars fiasco? Would he have given up cooking to do the voice of Yukon Cornelius in those claymation "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" TV specials? What if Michael V. hadn't told the show's producers how to find his big brother Bryan? Would we have been spared 14 hours of brotherly hate?

These questions -- er, most of them -- were addressed on Wednesday night's "Top Chef Reunion," or, more accurately, "Bravo's Evening of Men Revealing Their Chests in Unbuttoned Dress Shirts." As if to underscore the classy/crude vibe set by Tom and the supremely self-satisfied emcee Andy Cohen, the mood of the evening was polite and jovial, albeit punctuated by weird and/or inappropriate references to Mattin's drunken nudity, sexual tension among the chefs and Padma's means of conception (did she really say "eating huevos" or were we just hallucinating?).

Have we really gotten so far into the current season of "Top Chef" that Bravo feels the need to start dragging out the suspense -- namely, when will Robin be eliminated -- with an arbitrary, 11-chef reunion special? In retrospect, we should have known that that Very Special Natalie Portman episode was preparing us for an agonizing, two-week hibernation. Wake us when it's sweeps week.

In actuality, "Top Chef All Stars" was less a "where are they now" gift to loyal fans than it was a five-season clip compilation for non-fans, reminding them that the current Vegas edition, entertaining as it is, can't hold a candle to the pissy dysfunction -- or bad hairstyles -- of seasons past.

Presided over by Season Five's grade-A diva Fabio, the evening mostly succeeded in being a mellow, low-tension meeting of 11 "fan favorite" cheftestants. And don't think they got a free trip to Los Angeles without having to cook, either, although at least this time they were granted a luxurious $500 budget at Whole Foods. Still, drama and revelations were in short supply, while the most prominent theme of the evening was -- newsflash -- Marcel is still a dick. (Although he and Ilan seem to be legitimately chummy nowadays.)

The Season Two pipsqueak with the loud mouth and Robert Pattinson-on-steroids hair dominated this so-called reunion, both in present tense and in lovingly edited montages. You want a replay of Marcel talking over the judges during his critique? You got it. Care to revisit the unsuccessful attempt by his housemates to pin him down and shave off his downy brown locks? We don't, if only because it didn't produce the desired result: Marcel crying like a bald-headed baby.