Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Top Chef Season 2 Preview

I was watching a midnight showing of Clueless on Bravo. Come ya'll, we all love that movie. For me it's one of three movies I can spontaneously starting quoting from. The other two are When Harry Met Sally and Drop Dead Gorgeous. But that's neither here nor there. Anyway right after Cher's speech on the Haitians (pronounced Hate-Tee-Ens), Bravo shows a little preview of Top Chef. Returning to Top Chef will be the sneering Tom Colicchio and the Jaime Geicher-all-grown-up Gail Simmons.

The contestants themselves seems like a bunch of preening asshats themselves but it's hard to gauge anything from such promos. I would have never guessed from the first season's promo's that the totally loveable Lee Ann would be part of the mix. There is some lady who isn't all that attractive but delusionally says that she will use her sexiness to get what she wants. Has anyone in the history of reality TV actually be able to trade on their looks to win a challenge? Pluh-eeease!

The biggest change in the second season is the replacement of Billy Joel's Child Bride with Padma Lakshmi, a sometime actress, food personality, and most notably wife of Salman Rushdie. Unlike Billy Joel's Child Bride, she does have some concrete professional experience in the food realm. She hosted a couple of Food Network goes to exotic countries specials and was a presenter on Melting Pot, a Food Network show in the daytime that has rotating chefs cooking ethnic cuisine. Sadly Food Network would prefer white folks to educate their audience about ethnic food (i.e. Paula Deens collard green won tons). Anyway, I am excited at Padma's role in Top Chef, she's pretty laid back, slightly exotic, and a decent food presenter. I'm hoping she can balance the bitchiness of Gail.

In anticipation of the upcoming Top Chef Season, I ask you, my readers, what should be my nickname for Padma?

1. Sylk - After her unintentionally hilarious performance as Mariah Carey's rival in Glitter.

2. Salman Rushdie's Trophy Wife - Since this appears to be the landing area for women married to much more famous and certainly more accomplished men.

5 comments:

Dancer in DC said...

Both Clueless and Drop Dead Gorgeous are displayed proudly on our media shelf!

ScottE. said...

I'd probably go with the Glitter reference, even though I've not seen it.

Have we missed the first episode of this season? I'm not 100% sure I'll stick around to watch it...but maybe I'll catch a few episodes

DC Food Blog said...

You haven't missed the first episode. It will premiere after the second part of the Project Runway finale.

E :) said...

SRTW for sure!

Stef said...

I should probably reserve judgment until I actually see this woman... but, I'm leaning towards "Trophy Wife" since that was the first thing that popped into my head - "oh, I guess Bravo's going to stick with the 'random wife of random much more famous guy' host casting strategy!"