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Photo via Bravo
The "supersized" sixth season premiere of Top Chef airs tonight at 9 on Bravo. 17 new contestants will be battling it out at The M Resort Spa & Casino in Vegas this season, including local culinary rising star Michael Voltaggio. Padma Lakshmi returns to preside over the judges' table alongside head judge Tom Colicchio, and judges Gail Simmons and Toby Young. Guests this season will include Wolfgang Puck, Todd English, Natalie Portman, Penn & Teller, Hubert Keller and Nigella Lawson.
The premiere will have a secret twist - come on, is it really a secret? When does Top Chef not have some mind-blowing twist? The new chef'testants' (Ummm, are they trying to coin that word? chef'testants? Really?) first challenge will be to create a dish based on their own signature vices (a cigar smoking salmon? An adulterous foam? How do you make a dish of pasta bitch and complain?). Check out a preview here.
But we will all be biting our nails throughout the Vegas premiere just waiting for the Top Chef Masters finale at 10:15 when finalists Rick Bayless, Michael Chiarello and Hubert Keller duke it out (Is anyone still rooting for Chiarello? Personally, I think he got a bad rap).
The Top Chef Masters' final challenge will be the creation of a four-course meal. Each course is to be inspired by a memory from their past. It sounds riveting. Mom's apple pie? A noodle dish from a dream trip to Asia? The first meal they ever cooked for their romantic partner? So. Exciting. Every "Top Chef" winner - Harold Dieterle, Ilan Hall (who is about to open his LA eatery The Gorbals), Hung Huynh, Stephanie Izard and Hosea Rosenberg will appear, alongside Top Chef's Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi and Gail Simmons, as the Top Chef Master is chosen. Can you stand it?
