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.
Idol’s Other Simon Gets Hitched
Here’s one American Idol peformance even Simon Cowell couldn’t pan.
Idol creator and producer Simon Fuller married longtime love Natalie Swanston Friday evening in California.
The lavish, star-studded, three-day event was attended by Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown and the rest of the Spice Girls, whose careers Fuller helped launch. Model Claudia Schiffer and singers Leona Lewis and Annie Lennox were also wedding guests, while Lindsay Lohan sidekick Samantha Ronson deejayed the reception.
The sunset nuptials took place at the Staglin Family Vineyards in Napa Valley, the same location where Christina Aguilera and hubby Jordan Bratman were married in 2005.
Fuller, 48, was recently named the most successful British music manager of all time by Billboard Magazine. His 30-year-old bride is an interior decorator.
Napa Valley: Secret Hideout for the Stars
For a couple that seems to love attention, Posh and Becks are getting really good at eluding prying paparazzi eyes.
Apparently, Victoria celebrated her birthday with four parties, not three, as we'd originally thought.
Last Tuesday, the Beckhams, Beckinsales (Kate and hubby Len Wiseman), Heidi Klum and Seal all allegedly boarded Tom Cruise's private jet in Burbank for a quick trip to Napa Valley to do some wine tasting.
Some pics were finally leaked this week of Posh, Becks, Heidi, Seal and Kate among the vines, but still the A-list excursion is getting almost zero pressmaking this one very top secret trip. Good for them, we guess?
P.S. to Katie Holmes: Way to try and win back your BFF title. Offering your hubby's Gulfstream is guaranteed to get you some brownie points!
Christina Aguilera Finally Confirms: Yes, She’s Pregnant
Christina Aguilera has now formally confirmed the already widely-reported observation that she is expecting a baby.
Or, as the Grammy winner tells it, she will “enter into mommyhood” next year.
In an interview with Glamour magazine, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter, who has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, says that she intends to be a working mom who’ll “balance” caring for her child and tending to her career, reports the BBC.
“I want to get it right,” she is quoted as saying.
Describing the reaction of the father-to-be – Aguilera’s husband, music executive Jordan Bratman, 30 – she says, “He’s thrilled! He’s just great.”
Aguilera also says she finds Bratman (who, like her, hails from New York) “so supportive and amazing through everything. He came with me on the last leg of the tour and he was my support system. … I gush. I’m a lucky girl.”
The Couple’s First Baby
This will be the first child for the two, who married Nov. 19, 2005, during a lavish three-day affair in California’s Napa Valley. They had been dating since 2002.
Last month, Aguilera, Bratman, her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law set up her baby registry at the Beverly Hills boutique Bel Bambini.
In September, it was Paris Hilton who first publicly addressed the news about Aguilera’s entering mommyhood – while introducing the singer at a Las Vegas event. Announced the hotel heiress: “Congratulations to the most beautiful pregnant woman in the world.”