LET THE CULINARY GAMES BEGIN ON TOP CHEF

(VIDEO) Top Chef returns for it’s second season on Bravo.

Top Chef is back for it’s second season of culinary contests with co-founder of New York’s Gramercy Tavern Tom Colicchio and Food and Wine magazine critic Gail Simmons sitting at the judge’s table to determine who gets to continue cooking and who will pack their knives and move on. Gail talks about how attached the audience gets to the contestants.

Tom admits he had his doubts about judging the show but got five star ratings from fellow chefs.rn

“Different, more contestants, fiercer competition. I think having seen season one a lot of these contestants think they know what to expect. But at every turn they have no idea. As soon as we eliminated that person I would get in trouble. People got really mad at me. People were really emotional about who they liked and who they wanted to keep in the game and who they wanted to eliminate. I’m always amazed at the emotional response people have to everyone on the show.”

Four chefs will remain to cook it out in Hawaii for top chef receiving a state of the art pro kitchen and cash prize of $100,000. Former Food Network host Padma Lakshmi returns to hosting duties when Top Chef premieres Wednesday at 11PM on Bravo. Let the culinary games begin.rn

“My concern was that my peers were gonna kind of just laugh at this and think it’s really silly. Then when I saw some of the challenges I thought this was a little out there. But everybody loved it and chefs that I really respect like Danielle Bouloud and Thomas Keller, the real heavy weights in the industry, they all loved it. They would come up to me and say, ‘who’s winning this next week?’ No I can’t tell ya. Come on we’ve known each other for twenty years, you can tell me. No I can’t tell ya.’ There was this great ground swell that just kept coming and coming. It was great to be associated with it.”rn