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Top Chef 9 »     by Andy Dehnart / January 19, 2012, 12:55 PM Top Chef Texas has been kind of hit or miss for me. Some episodes seem interesting and inspired, while others seem like the producers are phoning the same tired formula again. But last night’s episode, which featured Charlize Theron and product placement for her upcoming film Snow White and the Huntsman, was this season’s best, and that’s because the challenge inspired the chefs to create outstanding, visually interesting food, and Charlize was a fantastic guest judge. This season has some talented characters—Beverly has been a complex villain, if you can call her that, and Chris Jones looks weirder each week—but they haven’t produced consistently entertaining episodes as the show treks around Texas. Everything came together last night, though, especially the food, which was incredible. Tom Colicchio called it “one of the finest meals I’ve had the pleasure of eating” in nine seasons, and during judging, said, “I’m nit-pick...

« America’s Next Top Model All-Stars Recap: The Models Go To Greece | Home November 09, 2011 10:15 PM by Veronica Dudo The heat is on during tonight’s reality TV chef competition, Top Chef: Texas where the remaining chefs try to win a coveted slot in the final 16. Who makes it and who is told to pack up their knives? Keep reading to find out who will be competing this season! For the first time ever, 29 chefs vied to win a slot in the Top Chef competition on Bravo . That’s almost double the amount of the chefs in past seasons. Season nine of Top Chef has a couple of twists. First, the contest takes place all over the state of Texas with host Padma Lakshmi and judges Tom Colicchio, Hugh Acheson, Emeril Lagasse and Gail Simmons. Last week, a few chefs were selected to compete including: Dakota Weiss, Chuy Valencia, Heather Terhune, Keith Rhodes, Whitney Otawka, Sarah Grueneberg, Chris Jones, Richie Farina, Chris Crary, Ty-Lor Boring and Nyesha Arrington. Tonight, the remaining chef...

Top Chef 9 »     by Andy Dehnart / November 10, 2011, 2:04 PM Top Chef Texas has aired two episodes now, but I’m going to pretend that next week’s is the first one, because otherwise I’d be ready to bail on this season because of produces’ horrible decision to copy other elimination shows as it narrowed a large pool of contestants down to 16. The franchise is in a deep, well-worn, boring rut , as Top Chef Just Desserts’ second season proved, so I can understand and appreciate the effort to try something new. What we got was pretty much a disaster: two episodes, four rounds, 29 contestants, none of which worked well at all. The three rounds of challenges were inconsistent in their level of difficulty, and the judging sucked; the judges should have smiled or frowned because that’s about the level of insight we got. But who cares when you don’t even know the person being eliminated? There were so many people and introductions that it was impossible to keep track of them—and why bother, s...

Magical Elves, the creators and producers of Top Chef, have sued the Texas attorney general to prevent the release of information in documents from the Governor Rick Perry’s office related to the $400,000 Texas paid for product placement in the new season. Today, The Dallas Observer reports on the progress of its requests for documents detailing what the money will be used for, and describes what happened: “…the governor’s office asked the Attorney General’s Office to first decide whether the records should be released. (Certain proprietary information is exempted from the state’s public record laws.) Despite pleas from Magical Elves, on September 21 the Attorney General’s Office ruled that, yes, whatever the governor’s office dug up belongs to the people. Perry’s office ‘may not withhold any of the submitted information.’ [Now,]…Magical Elves has sued the attorney general, hoping to stop the governor’s office from turning over some amount of information regarding its arrangement wi...