Sunday, June 17, 2007

Bitchin' in the Kitchen: Top Chef Returns

It's no Project Runway, but Bravo's Top Chef ain't bad as a stopgap replacement. (And it's a thousand times better than Top Design, which attempted to re-create the PR magic and went horribly awry. See ya later, decorators!) Returning tonight at 10 p.m. for its third-season premiere, Top Chef moves the action to Miami Beach and adds Queer Eye's Ted Allen as a recurring judge, along with regular tasting buds Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons. The series vastly improved last season—the languorous Lakshmi rubs some viewers the wrong way, but she was a huge improvement over season one's wooden, robotic Katie Lee Joel—but Chef often seemed more interested in distracting antics than in choosing a worthy winner. (It shoulda been you, Sam!) That said, we're hungry for some overcooked drama—not to mention missing Tim Gunn—so we'll belly up to the table one more time.

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