Leggo My Padma!Lakshmi is looking mighty comfortable with IMG honcho Ted Forstmann.
ByDaniel Maurer
Objects of Desire
Kelly Choi Makes Top Chef Twice As NiceKelly Choi is Bravo’s latest hostess, and a food blogger asks the inevitable: “Who do you think is foxier, Kelly or Padma?”
Padma and Tom Robbed at Emmys!At the Primetime Emmys, ‘Top Chef’ lost out to Jerry Bruckheimer’s ‘Amazing Race.’ Hollywood can only love its own, we guess.
ByJessica Coen
Hot Chefs
Hotter Than SobaJean-Georges Vongerichten makes this year’s list of most stylish New Yorkers.
Padma Thinks Women Are More Sensitive in the KitchenPadma Lakshmi, profiled in this week’s Page Six Magazine, says she thinks women have more sensitive palates, and she won’t start dressing like Mario Batali anytime soon.
Everything You Want to Know About ‘Top Chef’Have you had your fill of pre-season-four Top Chef hype yet? No? Well, fix yourself a cup of coffee and settle in for a good, long read. Hosts Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi did a loooong conference call with reporters yesterday, and the results can be found in a six-page post on Monsters and Critics, among other places. Among the highlights: Tom saying that he never has a conversation with the contestants outside of the kitchen, and Padma adding “And actually, I really don’t want to.” We were also pleased to learn that the single worst thing Padma ate in the four seasons of Top Chef was made by none other than Ilan Hall. (Though she points out that he made one of the best dishes, too.) It’s not the same as watching the show, but it should hold you until the premiere on March 12.
A Chat with Bravo’s ‘Top Chef’ Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio [Monsters and Critics]
Related: Grub Street’s complete coverage of Top Chef
Back of the House
Shipwrecked With Padma LakshmiWe met Top Chef hostess Padma Lakshmi on a yacht in Miami Beach yesterday. No, it was not a private cruise. Padma was shilling Vacheron watches and graced us with a brief interview.
I see they have a menu on the yacht tonight that is your doing.
I didn’t cook this menu. But if you try some of the recipes from my book, I know you’ll enjoy them.
Eh, I probably won’t. They’re all for healthy little salads and curries and so forth, right?
Uh, no! This just proves that you haven’t even opened my book up! [Laughing.] The best recipe in it is for brisket wrapped in bacon.
NewsFeed
What to Expect From the New ‘Top Chef’
We just screened the first episode of this season’s Top Chef, and again, we find the show compelling. And just the same as previous ones! Padma speaks slowly, Tom is bald and cocky, and Rocco DiSpirito and Tony Bourdain are back onboard. The location is a nonfactor — the main contribution Chicago makes is a Pizzeria Uno product placement. But the contestants still fit into those archetypes we love to argue about with Adam Platt.
Mediavore
Starbucks Nixes Breakfast Sandwiches; Kenny Shopsin Ready for Mind-AlteringIn addition to slowing its expansion (finally), Starbucks will halt “sales of hot breakfast sandwiches because their smell interferes with the aroma of coffee.” [WSJ]
If Padma Lakshmi could eat anywhere right now, she’d head to a little taco stand in Mexico for some fish tacos on the beach. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Chelsea hot spot Stereo, which was closed by police earlier this month, will not be reopening at its current location because the landlord bought out the lease. [NYP]
Mediavore
EPA Joins Mercury Craze; A ‘Seinfeld’–Inspired Food StudyThe Environmental Protection Agency is beginning to examine the mercury levels in the twenty most commonly eaten fish in the New York City region. [NYT]
Top Chef seductress/hostess Padma Lakshmi is moving into a full-floor loft in Alphabet City. [The Real Estate/NYO]
The holy triumvirate of burgers, fries, and milk shakes continues to dominate the nation’s culinary imagination. [NRN]
NewsFeed
‘Top Chef’ Cookbook Remains a Mystery to Us
When we got the Top Chef Cookbook press release yesterday, we were immediately consumed with curiosity. The tome purports to include “dishes from the Elimination Rounds and the Quick-Fire Challenges, daring fans to join the fun by recreating their favorite recipes at home,” but beyond that there aren’t many details. Will C.J.s burnt broccolini, which Tom Colicchio considered the worst dish ever served on Top Chef, be in there? Or maybe his green tuna casserole, which Tony Bourdain compared to something found on the floor of an Irish bar on Saint Patrick’s Day? It’s safe to say that the show’s winning recipes, like Howie’s pork and beans seasoned with baldie sweat, will be there, in cleaned-up form. However until we get our copy, we can’t say. As for the book’s other touted features, such as “in-depth discussions with contestants, judges and crew,” there’s only one question that matters to us: Was Padma high the whole time or not?
Bravo Media Announces “Top Chef: The Cookbook” Published By Chronicle Books [Snack]
Related: Adam Platt Was Right About ‘Top Chef’ All Along
Beef
Padma Lakshmi Now Refusing FoodA juicy item in today’s Daily News has Grub Street stoner-goddess Padma Lakshmi acting like quite the diva at Fiamma. According to the report, chef Fabio Trabocchi created several dishes for her perusal, which the lanky Top Chef judge sent back in a huff. Fiamma denies it went down like that, and we admit it’s hard to imagine Padma being roused to scream about anything, but given her willingness to eat the swill served by her Top Chef contestants, a few plates of Trabocchian improvisation doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
Tart Words From the ‘Chef’ Host [NYDN]
Related: The Salty Wit and Wisdom of Padma Lakshmi
Mediavore
Kate Moss Digs Le Royale; FreshDirect Fires 85 WorkersApparently the opening-night party at Le Royale was a success, drawing the likes of Kate Moss, who made out with the D.J.[Imbible/Citysearch]
Related: Le Royale Might Just Bring Nightlife Out of the Doldrums
Frank Bruni applauds restaurants seeking out new forms of hospitality, but is wary of the WiFi availability: “Will the glow of laptop screens and the percussion of typing become pervasive visual and aural backdrops for our meals?” [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
A former Scores cocktail waitress is suing the owners for being told to act more like a stripper. [NYP]
Back of the House
Best This, Best That … We Say, ‘Who Cares?’
The year-end rush to give out awards has started in earnest, and two totally meaningless such contests present themselves to us today. On Endless Simmer, the nominations are in for Eater of the Year and include Tony Bourdain, Padma Lakshmi, some locavores, and Joey Chestnut. Are you kidding? Why even ask the question? If Joey Chestnut, having vanquished Kobayashi and established himself as the greatest competitive eater in the world, doesn’t get this award, why bother giving it? The man deserves it just for eating 103 Krystal burgers in eight minutes earlier this year.
NewsFeed
‘Top Chef’ Now Invades Last Imaginable Personal Space
There’s the Top Chef blog, Top Chef reruns, the endless media fodder about Padma and Tom and Dave Martin’s new restaurant, and all the speculation about next season, which judge Gail Simmons tells us is definitely the best one yet. This being the aughts, though, the show needs to expand its mindshare in the off-season and has done so with a wireless game on AT&T and Sprint. Top Chef Challenge proved impossible to download onto a new iPhone, but its creator sent us a phone with the game installed. It’s ridiculous, as is Top Chef, but like the show, it actually draws in some crazy way on the realities of cooking.
In Other Magazines
The Literary Yule Log Burns Away
The food magazines are all in full-tilt holiday mode this month, but there’s some interesting stuff in there in spite of all the boilerplate. Saveur leads out with a massive roasting package, but the mag also includes an equally useful (if not equally pornographic) service feature on Champagne. There’s also a nice personal essay by Dana Bowen about electric slicers as a totem of holiday feats past. Food & Wine is a big old mess of Yuletide content, but the issue includes their Best Restaurant Dishes of 2007, and the sole New York representative is, you guessed it, the Bo Ssäm. (Sigh.) There’s also the excellent profile of Tailor’s Eben Freemen mentioned here recently and everything you want to know about what chefs are doing in New Orleans and Lake Tahoe. (Which in our case would be nothing.) Gourmet is all recipes and entertaining, as dull as paint, with, amazingly, an article about Padma Lakshmi’s chutneys with no image of the lady herself. (An article on the raising of Kobe cattle, though, fascinated us.) Finally, Food Arts brings their year-end trend piece, on the strange confluence of health consciousness and conspicuous consumption, as well as a piece by Pichet Ong on the rise of the celebrity pastry chef. Not a bad month in all.
Click and Save
Where Padma Eats Cheap in New YorkTangy Tart Hot & Sweet. That’s the name of model turned Top Chef dictatress Padma Lakshmi’s new cookbook, and that’s just how she behaved before swooning fans last night at her Strand book signing. After donning “serious” glasses to read food-related mini-memoirs from the book, she told the crowd that saying “Please pack your knives and go” to Top Chef’s weekly loser was “the hardest part of my job” … and divulged that men often ask her to say it to them in a dominatrix-y sort of way. (“It creeps me out!” she insisted.) She said the show had knocked down any remaining foodie limits she might have had: “I’ll put anything in my mouth once.” Oh, Padma!
In Other Magazines
The Salty Wit and Wisdom of Padma LakshmiThe latest issue of Vanity Fair features a profile of none other than Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, who’s promoting her new cookbook, Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet. Amid all the foodie talk, Padma actually reveals quite a lot about herself. A sampling:
• On the Top Chef Emmy nomination: “[It] was a big fucking deal.”
• On life without her ex-husband, Salman Rushdie: “I’m really fucking sad.”
• On her new cookbook: “Finishing the fucking book was like being in labor for two years!”
• On hosting dinner party: “I pulled this out of my ass.”
• On an AIDS charity she supports: “…we’re doing a campaign and an event and you should buy a fucking table.”
• On telling the press if she had a boyfriend: “My husband would call fucking Reuters.”
• On a tabloid’s coverage of her bra size: “…they said it was 36C. I said, 34C, motherfucker!”
• On her current living situation: “Now I’m staying in a fucking hotel with all my shit in storage.”
Damn, Padma.
A Taste of Fame [VF]
Back of the House
‘Top Chef’ Winner Declines to Shake BootyAfter trash-talking and sous vide-ing his way through the season, Top Chef contestant Hung Huynh finally prevailed over his competitors in last night’s finale. Serving up dishes with a “touch of love”, Huynh seemed to answer his critics’ charges that his cooking lacked soul. He talked to us today about his change of heart and why he doesn’t feel like Brad Pitt.
Mediavore
Bouley’s New Japanese Restaurant Off the Chain; ‘Top Chef’ ProducerThe restaurant that David Bouley plans to open next year with Japan’s largest professional cooking school will be a multilevel space featuring a robata grill, a Japanese room with Western touches, and a kaiseki dining room serving Kyoto-style seasonal tasting menus. [NYT]
Related: David Bouley to Open Restaurant With Japan’s Top Cooking School
Scott Bryan has left Veritas, and not for 10 Downing Street, apparently. And, in underwhelming FloFab news, Daniel Boulud still hasn’t chosen a name for his master’s burger restaurant, and Lever House’s Deborah Snyder is the new pastry chef at Alto and L’Impero. [NYT]
The executive producer of Top Chef answers questions about cheftestants who hook up and challenges that didn’t make the cut. [NYDN]
‘Top Chef’ Non-Winner CJ on the Broccolini Backstory, and Why Hung’sChris Jacobsen, a.k.a. CJ, got the boot on Top Chef last night, much to Adam Platt’s dismay, as well as the dismay of many viewers. The 6’10” former volleyball player from Venice Beach was an audience favorite for his unpretentious, self-effacing style, but now he’s back in the real world. We had a chance to talk with him about Hung, Howie, and why he thinks he has a shot with Padma Lakshmi.