TC News and Information 8.7.11 - Happy Anniversary to the Magical Elves!

Variety spotlights the production company behind Top Chef as the Magical Elves turn 10! Take a trip down memory lane here. And read more about upcoming Top Chef Season 9 here, where a Bravo exec discloses “We started things a little differently with more chefs. A big challenge for us after ‘All Stars’ is to make everything seem big again and I think we've succeeded. The challenges are inventive, there are a lot of special guests and there will be a traveling element, which is new.”

Meanwhile, Top Chef Masters has been renewed for a 4th season and the Elves are casting a new Bravo series, ‘Around the World in Eighty Plates,’ which “will follow up-and-coming chefs as they travel to various cities around the world to compete in culinary challenges. Contestants will have to learn the local cuisine, culture and customs so that they can best reinvent the menu at world-renowned restaurants,” according to TV Guide.

In other news, check out this New York Times item about head judge Tom Colicchio’s “secret farm” next his new Riverpark restaurant. (Take that, Elia.)

Top Chef Masters judge/former Gourmet editor/food memoirist Ruth Reichl is penning a new novel “set in World War II and the present.” It may involve food.

TC Season 2 and All-Stars contestant Marcel Vigneron is doing low-tech street tacos for The Gap.

We hear Season 6 finalist and Fan Favorite Kevin Gillespie won the Celebrity Chef Cookoff at this weekend’s Gig Harbor Wine and Food Festival in Washington State. Don’t miss this great video interview with the Bearded One filmed prior to the event. Turns out this Atlanta boy used to cook in the Pacific Northwest.

TC All-Star Dale Levitski and the team from his Chicago restaurant Sprout (which includes his Season 3 co-contestant and bff Sara Nguyen) were invited to cook at the James Beard House in NYC. Don’t miss the photos of their feast from Feast.

Season 3’s Camille Becerra’s newest gig is as a culinary producer of “pop-up” dinners in Manhattan. The Daily Meal explains.

Season 4’s Nikki Cascone is in on the culinary producer action as well, with “Southampton Supper Under the Stars” August 27, where she’ll be joined by TC contestants Manuel Trevino and Angelo Sosa, and a Bravo Housewife (or three?).

And reaching into the “way-back machine,” we’re glad to see Cynthia Sestito (who elected to leave at the beginning of the first Season of Top Chef due to her father’s illness) is out and about and picnicking with panache. Check out these photos from a recent Grey Goose event in the Hamptons.

Only two weeks and change until Top Chef returns to Wednesday nights, with Season 2 of Top Chef: Just Desserts! I’m especially excited because one of the contestants, Megan Ketover, is from my city (Cincinnati) and I have Downtown Restaurant Week reservations to taste her food! Anyone else have a hometown contestant to root for?

Posted on AllTopChef.com

TC News and Information 7.8.11

Congratulations to Bryan Voltaggio on the birth of his new daughter!

Is brother Michael Voltaggio working on a restaurant in India, while his L.A. restaurant named "Ink." remains unopened?

Spike Mendelsoh's Philly expansion of his Good Stuff Eatery chain appears to be dead in the water - er, at least until after 2012 - according to Feast. Top Chef: Just Desserts finalist Danielle Keene has resigned from LA Creamery. And Jamie Lauren is out at Beechwood while Kogi food truck king Roy Choi reportedly takes over the kitchen.

In more upbeat news, Season 6 finalist/Fan Favorite Kevin Gillespie, who, compared to many TC competitors, has remained pretty selective about appearances, has made this "30 Under 30" list of "chefs, bloggers, farmers, activists, and educators who are just as passionate about delicious food as they are about its sustainability and safe cultivation." You can, however, catch him at the 2011 Gig Harbor Wine & Food Festival in Washington State August 6.

A Top Chef contender who has remained even more under the radar, Season 2's Cliff Crooks (ousted after the infamous head-shaving incident with Marcel Vigneron), may make an appearance on the new season of Gordon Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen," whose winner is promised the nebulous position of serving as sous under BLT Steak's current executive chef - yep, that would be Cliff.

As if the cooking competition reality show genre isn't already glutted, Top Chef producers The Magical Elves have issued a casting call for a "potential" new series for Bravo seeking "adventurous" professional chefs at "all skill levels." Does this mean we'll be spared a second season of Rocco's Dinner Party?

Speaking of food reality shows gone awry, here's an insightful update on the demise of the prize offered to the winner of "America's Next Great Restaurant," Jamawn Woods, for his Soul Daddy restaurants, in which Top Chef Masters 3 host Curtis Stone was supposedly an investor.

Finally, for your Friday summer reading pleasure, some wickedly funny "fake foodie fan fiction," by Jason Kessler. Curtis Stone is the protagonist in this inaugural installment of "Inside the Stoves" via Eater, featuring "excerpts" from faux books that are a great send-up of food media. I'm looking forward to more!

Happy weekend!

Posted on AllTopChef.com

TC News and Information 12.27.10

Mike Isabella reveals more about last week's tennis-themed Elimination Challenge, talks about his upcoming pizza restaurant, and claims there was less drinking during the All-Stars season than previous seasons in this video interview from the Washington Post.

Atlanta Magazine catches up with Kevin Gillespie here and gets an update on his plans "to create an old-fashioned, old timey-style barbecue joint meant to emulate the original roots of barbecue" - mmmmmmmmmmm.

You can catch Tre Wilcox doing cooking demos in Brandon, Florida Jan. 13 and 14.

And here's a look at the Magical Elves' newest food-related TV show.

Who Got Cast for All-Stars - and Who Didn't

I love it when the producers speak. Here's what Jane Lipsitz and Dan Cutforth of the Magical Elves told TV Guide about who got cast, and why - click through the slideshow to see their accompanying comments.

According to this item, Season 7's Angelo Sosa, winner of the first All-Star Elimination Challenge, had only 4 days after the S7 finale before the producers called him about TCAS, and a week and a half before he started filming All-Stars.

We already knew Bryan Voltaggio and Kevin Gillespie turned down opportunities to return for All-Stars. But according to her facebook page, Ashley Merriman from Season 6 was also invited but declined: "Watched Top Chef All Stars last night - and am thrilled I said no to doing the show. But I'm cheering on my girls Jennifer Carroll and Tiffani Faison and my boy from Jersey Mike Isabella."

The ever-gracious Kevin Gillespie posted this: "I want to wish everyone on Top Chef All Stars good luck. As everyone knows, I chose not to participate in order to spend more time at Woodfire Grill and on my many new projects. I can only hope that another TV show is in my future, as I would love to be able to share my love of food with all of you again soon."

Say tuned for more, kids. The mailbox is bulging, and methinks pretty much everyone is ready to capitalize on whatever additional 15 minutes of fame they can garner.

TC News and Info Special Edition: Yigit's Finale Viewing Party and The Elves Speak

With special dispensation from "Bravo and the Pope,” Yigit and a crowd of supporters watched an early West Coast viewing Wednesday night of the Just Desserts finale at Macy’s at San Francisco's Union Square. Click through for some print, lots of photos, and especially the video, where Yigit expresses his relief to no longer have to "keep this bloody thing a secret", his amazement that so many people actually know how to pronounce his name, his thoughts on deciding to contribute to the Trevor/It Gets Better Project, and his appreciation for Sherry Yard, his sous-chef on day one of the TCJD final challenge. Oh, yeah, and the crowd also goes wil

Now that the inaugural season of Top Chef Just Desserts is over, want to know what the producers were up against? Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz  of The Magical Elves share some behind-the-scenes tidbits here.

TC News and Information 9.20.10

We all have our opinions about Season 7. Executive producers Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz of Magical Elves offer their own critique here.

Meanwhile, there were plenty of Season 7 finale parties and Just Desserts premiere parties last Wednesday. Zagat offers up a comparison of the Gail Simmons/Food & Wine finale bash at Craft (where Ed Cotton confirmed he will not be appearing in future TC’s – which presumably includes the all-but-certain All-Star Season 8) with the premiere party hosted by Johnny Iuzzini (at which no desserts were served).  

Gawker attended the F&W shindig, encountering a Padma “lost in the fog of forgetfulness,” then fled to watch the episode elsewhere, as no one in the party crowd seemed to care to watch it.  

DCist reports that viewing parties for the final S7 episode at Eric Ripert's West End Bistro, The Oval Room (where S7 contestant Tamesha Warren is the sous chef) and Spike Mendelsohn's Good Stuff Eatery were sparsely attended (but as someone who lives a long way from D.C., I still would have loved to be one of the few).

Just Desserts contestant Yigit Pura's restaurant, Taste, hosted a TC:JD viewing party, which definitely included desserts, which you can see more of here.

Kevin Sbraga reveals more details about the restaurant he hopes to open with the $125,000 he earned as Season 7 winner, while runner-up Ed Cotton says he would have sat on the money but still has aspirations for his own restaurant...

Season 4 winner Stephanie Izard has finally opened her new restaurant, Girl and the Goat, which Chicago Magazine offers an in-depth review of here. And Season 5 winner Hosea Rosenberg’s new food truck business gets a thumbs-up from his hometown paper in Boulder for its global cuisine here.

Heather H. (as in Hurlburt), winner of the Top Chef: Just Desserts Episode 1 Elimination Challenge, talks about TC:JD and her prior competitive cooking experience here.

And TC:JD contestant Zac “Gold Dust” Young will be adding fried whoopee pies, seasonal doughnuts, and a chocolate soufflé with salted peanut caramel and nougat ice cream to the menu at NYC’s Flex Mussels restaurant according to this report.

The charming and multi-talented Hubert Keller (he’s also apparently a kick-ass DJ), whose Top Chef judging experience goes back to Season 1 and who is fondly remembered by many for his resourcefulness in cooking pasta in a dorm-room shower on Top Chef Masters Season 1, returns as a judge on Just Desserts this week (he’s alternating with Dannielle Kyrillos of Daily Candy – anyone else heard of her? I hadn’t). In other news, Hubert’s Las Vegas outpost of his San Francisco-based Fleur de Lys has closed but will reopen as a tapas restaurant with a lower price point in December according to this report.

 [Still from Anthony Bourdain's Alternate Universe]

And finally, because he may be one of the most beloved Top Chef judges of all time, even if he wimped out on the snarkiness in his Season 7 appearance, a bit of Anthony Bourdain news. Tony is writing a “graphic novel” (aka comic book) about “ultraviolent food nerds.” In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess I am a Bourdain-o-phile (yes, I actually plunked down $46.50 to see him live and wrote about it at length here). 

So that’s my inaugural post as a brand spankin’ new member of the ATC team. Any links you especially liked – or didn’t? Any news you’d like to see here that I’m missing? Please let me know in the comments or via email.

Thanks!
eggy