Top Chef’s exciting new location
Bravo’s top-rated and highly acclaimed reality food show, Top Chef, has big plans for the fifth season. Like real estate, it’s all about location, location, location and Top Chef has chosen a most unique place, somewhere you might not guess in a game of 20 questions. I’m not going to reveal the place until after the jump, because there may be some of you out there that want to be surprised.
Just to recap, Top Chef has already spent seasons in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. They’ve also had special episodes and finales in Napa Valley, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Aspen and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Traveling to interesting and even exotic locales is part of the fun, giving the contestants a chance to incorporate the regional foods and the style of that part of the world.
Okay, if the suspense is getting to you — I know it is — go to the jump and see where season five of Top Chef is going to be…
BROOKLYN! No, I’m not kidding. The new season of Top Chef will reportedly be set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — hometown of Barbra Streisand. (She grew up at the corner of Newkirk and Nostrand Avenue, if you want to be precise.) Also Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Seriously, this isn’t as bizarre as you might think. Brooklyn is New York. It’s one of the five boroughs and it’s quite trendy and gentrified, as they say in NYC. There are great studios out there — I remember going to Brooklyn when Another World filmed there, in the same studios that now house As the World Turns.
Also, some of the most amazing restaurants and chefs are in the metropolitan area, including season one winner Harold Dieterle. Peter Luger’s, the number one steakhouse in the world for 24 years and running, is in Brooklyn. There’ll be no shortage of guest judges or restaurants. It’s actually an excellent choice.
Top Chef contestants probably will be bunking in a Brooklyn townhouse or loft, and they’re putting together a new kitchen and studio set as speak. TC isn’t the only reality show that’ll be shooting in Brooklyn; MTV’s The Real World is also going to be filming there in the upcoming season.
Bravo orders up a Top Chef spinoff
Now that the big finale is in the books, and the right chef won, the fine folks over at Top Chef HQ have some time on their hands. It appears they’ll be spending it getting going on their new spinoff, Top Chef Jr. (not an official title). According to the press release, the series comes about because Top Chef is the “number one food show on cable.” I think that is a point that might be contested by someone at Food Network, but I do agree, it is my favorite of the cooking based shows.
The show will have an eight episode run and feature teens (13-16) in the familiar competitions to see if they are junior top chefs. Bravo calls it a natural expansion of their food domain and says it will be fun for the whole family. I can’t help but think of Trading Spaces: Boys vs Girls. It was a fine imitation of the original Trading Spaces, but didn’t hold up among the parent show’s fans. And that’s exactly what I would expect from Top Chef Jr.
In other news over at Bravo, the producers behind Work Out and Paradise Hotel have their own food show in the works. The as yet untitled Jean-Christophe Novelli project will follow the chef as he makes the move to the states to open a cooking school in Los Angeles. The Novelli Academy Cookery School, in the UK, has been ranked as one of the top 25 cookery schools in the world and he hopes to repeat those successes in the US.
The show will follow the move, setting up the school, and the testing of his students based on what they have learned. It’s been picked up for an eight episode run. Having never seen Novelli in action before, I have no idea how this one is going to shake out. The idea has potential, and the track record of the school implies a more serious direction for the show, but I did just type producers of Paradise Hotel up there. It gives me pause, thinking that this could be spun into some kind of Ramsey-esque mess.