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Top Chef New York Season 5

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marigold:

Top Chef New York Season 5

Episode 1: Melting Pot
 
The chefs team up to shop in various neighborhoods around the city in order to create dishes influenced by ethnic flavors.

marigold:
The article with Padma in Harper's Bazaar:

A Fashionable Life: Padma Lakshmi

The Top Chef host is living the single life in New York City and flying high — and not only because she has a swing in her living room

Not that anyone asked, but Padma Lakshmi, the model, cookbook author, actress, jewelry designer, and host of Bravo's Top Chef, believes that her greatest asset is not her beauty, her intellect, or her indomitable gumption. Rather, it is her taste. "Whether it's my taste in food, my taste in clothes, my taste in music, furnishings, or art," she says confidently, "that is the one skill I have, and it can be applied to anything."

Due to the success of Top Chef, "I can get a table at any restaurant I want," Lakshmi says. And though she hates to drop names — "It makes me feel cheesy" — she now counts Charlize Theron as one of her fans. "She even did an impression of me. My assistant said, 'Oh, my God, that is totally Padma.'"

Originally, Lakshmi imagined the show as good publicity for her 2007 cookbook, Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet, but turned down the first season to work on a BBC miniseries. Katie Lee Joel hosted instead and was replaced. "She's a nice girl," says Lakshmi, "but she was ill prepared for it. I think a lot of it wasn't Katie's fault. The producers really wanted me and didn't get me, and it's hard for anyone to come into those shoes. But I don't think she's suffering at all."

It is just a few days after Lakshmi's 38th birthday. "I'm probably one of the few models or actresses who will just tell you my age. I feel good. I really like the way I look," she says while snacking on the almonds, olives, and dried plums she's laid out in the living room of the modest East Village apartment she moved into after her marriage with literary giant Salman Rushdie ended in the summer of 2007.

The living room's focal point is undoubtedly the swing. A businessman friend had it made for her after she searched, without luck, for one on Craigslist and eBay.

Lakshmi jumps out of her chair to demonstrate. "You really swing!" she squeals, her slippers dropping to the floor as she glides from her kitchen counter to her green velvet couch. Though Pamela Anderson cavorted in the nude on a swing in her living room while hubby Tommy Lee played the piano, Lakshmi claims hers isn't so naughty.

"I thought it would be a really romantic thing to have," she muses. "If I can't sleep, I come out here and swing in the dark."

The swing contributes to Lakshmi's idea of a little bohemia. Her life downtown is very different from when she was attached, for just over three years, to Rushdie. When asked if she misses married life, she thinks for a moment and answers, resoundingly, "No." She explains, "I miss the good times I had with the man I was married to, but I'm much happier today than I was a year and a half ago. In order to get there, I had to walk through an ocean of crap. But I've built my life around the way I want to live now, and my little corner of the world feels nice."

Days she is not filming Top Chef are shared with an assistant and a designer who, from a small office in her apartment, are helping her develop a line of Indian-inspired jewelry. "My success is their success," Lakshmi says steadfastly of her two employees. "That's really how it works." Sometimes the girls work until 10:00 p.m., "sometimes they leave at 4:00 for pedicures." It's a far cry from the global success of, say, Heidi Klum or Tyra Banks, but it's a living. "I wasn't a Sports Illustrated model. I was much more a couture girl. I'm sure that those girls made a ****load more money than I did," she explains. "It's with great humility that I say that those girls have achieved a lot."

She describes her apartment as something of a street fair. There's always "fairy water," Lakshmi's spice-and-fruit-infused water, and "there's always food, always music and candles and incense. I'll have a girlfriend who's a DJ stop by for a drink. My girls walk around barefoot. It's like Andy Warhol's Factory, but in gypsy-girl mode." Adding to the Warhol spirit is the large portrait of Lakshmi wearing a diaphanous red dress that exposes her breasts, painted by her longtime friend Francesco Clemente.

At the moment, Lakshmi's apartment is a shrine to her fashion obsessions. A few old Stella McCartney pantsuits and Tom Ford archival pieces hang in her bedroom closet, while a bureau is devoted to traditional saris and costumes from acting gigs like the Ten Commandments miniseries. Her dressing room features new Chanel boots, a new bejeweled Roger Vivier clutch she picked up in Paris, and the outfit her friend Marc Jacobs sent her to wear at his show.

Lakshmi's hope is that one day soon she will be able to expand into the townhouse she's eyeing eagerly next door. What's more, it would give her space to start a family. "I would like to have some children very soon," she says. As for her personal life, "I date some. I think it's hard. As you grow older, you become a little less malleable."

According to Lakshmi, what you see is what you get. "There was no interior decorator who came into my apartment and said, This would look kitschy and great. There wasn't a ghostwriter who said, It would be cool if you had an essay about Morocco in your cookbook," she says. "The things I've accomplished have really been on my own steam. For good or bad, every word, every picture, every taste is mine."

Link: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-articles/a-fashionable-life-padma-lakshmi-1108

marigold:

.... some photos from the article:

marigold:
There is a really good and really long article and if I wasn't really tired I would post the whole thing:

‘Top Chef’ Season 5 Fellow chefs, barkeeps and ex-roommates give us the scoop on the new cheftestants



“Top Chef” fans are a pretty serious bunch. The minute one season’s winner is announced, the next batch of contestants are ready for some roasting. On the spit: “Top Chef” Season 5’s hopefuls, who mark the series’ return to New York after a brief detour to Chicago last season. (It debuts on Nov. 12.)

When taping on “Top Chef” Season 5 began in Brooklyn this past summer, the blogosphere was abuzz with chef IDs and speculation about who’d be the last cook standing. Yeah, Bravo's own Web site give you some quick, sugary bios on the contestants. We did our own sleuthing—here’s what we dug up...

Link to the article: http://newyork.metromix.com/restaurants/article/top-chef-season-5/734713/content

marigold:


BRAVO ANNOUNCES DIET DR. PEPPER, THE GLAD PRODUCTS COMPANY, QUAKER, SWANSON BROTH AND TOYOTA AS TOP SPONSORS FOR "TOP CHEF: NEW YORK"

Released by Bravo

Bravo Renews Series Partnership With Food & Wine Magazine For Fifth Season, Premiering Wednesday, Nov 12 At 10 PM ET/PT

Nielsen IAG Media Research Shows That Brands Do Better On Bravo

NEW YORK November 4, 2008 Bravo has inked partnerships with Diet Dr. Pepper, The Glad Products Company, Quaker, Swanson Broth and Toyota as official sponsors for the fifth season of Bravo's Emmy and James Beard Award-winning series and the No. 1 food show on cable, "Top Chef," premiering Wednesday, November 12 at 10 p.m., ET/PT. These multi-platform deals provide an unparalleled level of brand exposure through exclusive in-show product integration as well as a major on-air and online presence. The announcements were made by Susan Malfa, Senior Vice President, Ad Sales, Bravo Media and Oxygen Media.

Bravo's position with sponsors and brand recall once again sizzled with advertisers in 2008, as the network was ranked No. 1 in cable among adults 18-49 for program engagement and specifically, "Top Chef: Chicago" (3/12/08- 6/11/08) was ranked No. 1 in program engagement among all measured Wednesday primetime regularly scheduled cable programs, according to Nielsen IAG Media Research.

For the fifth consecutive cycle, Bravo continues its overall series partnership with Food & Wine magazine, including the expertise of the magazine's special projects director Gail Simmons as a series judge. The magazine will once again provide prizing for the series the winner of "Top Chef: New York" will be featured in an upcoming issue and will be showcased at the Annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.

"'Top Chef's' alliance with our sponsors has produced real results in brand recall, brand opinion lift and program engagement the highest in all of television," said Malfa. "A diverse group of partners who committed to the 'Top Chef' brand have benefited from Bravo's relentless drive to innovate, lead and learn about impactful and new advertising approaches."

Elements of the sponsorships and integrations surrounding "Top Chef: New York" include:

Diet Dr. Pepper joins the "Top Chef" team as a fully integrated sponsor and official beverage of the series, sponsoring an on-air quickfire challenge and a custom vignette series featuring past Top Chef talent Betty Fraser, Howie Kleinberg and Brian Malarkey. These chefs were challenged to create treats with Top Chef Season 4 Winner, Stephanie Izard directing viewers online to a custom microsite to see her comments, the chefs' recipes and additional guilt-free recipes. Diet Dr. Pepper is also the exclusive sponsor of Top Chef's weekly "Live Voting" where users can vote on each week's drama and enter to win a trip to New York City.

The Glad Products Company will provide a $100,000 cash prize to the "Top Chef" winner to use to advance his or her culinary career. A fully integrated sponsor, Glad products will be featured on-air and throughout the series. A custom spot featuring the chef'testants' favorite dishes to make with leftovers will be airing in the show this season as well. On www.Bravotv.com, Glad will sponsor season one chef Lee Anne Wong's online exclusive cooking webisode series "The Wong Way To Cook," which teaches viewers how to make each week's winning recipe at home and another dish from the leftovers. Glad will also be sponsoring the "Top Chef" Foodie Flyaway Sweepstakes.

A fully integrated sponsor, Quaker will be involved in a quickfire challenge this season.

New this season, Swanson Broth is a fully integrated sponsor with elements that include involvement in a Quickfire Challenge, sponsorship of the "Top Chef" Foodie Flyaway Sweepstakes and a custom on-air vignette focusing on the Chef'testant's Kitchen Secrets. In addition, digitally the "Top Chef Recipe Finder," on www.BravoTV.com will incorporate Swanson Broth recipes and a custom microsite will focus on providing holiday cooking ideas and will be updated after the holiday season to focus on the Everyday Cook.

Toyota is a fully integrated sponsor and will provide Toyota Sequoia's to serve as the primary transportation vehicles for the competing chef'testants as they make their way around New York for "Top Chef" challenges. Toyota will also prize an all-new 2010 Toyota Venza. Toyota will also be a sponsor for the "Top Chef" Foodie Flyaway Sweepstakes.

Bravo's "Top Chef" offers a fascinating window into the competitive, pressure-filled environment of world-class cookery and the restaurant business at the highest level. The series features seventeen aspiring chefs who compete for their shot at culinary stardom and the chance to earn the prestigious title of "Top Chef." Each episode holds two challenges for the chefs. The first is a quickfire test of their basic abilities and the second is a more involved elimination challenge designed to test the versatility and inventiveness of the chefs as they take on unique culinary trials such as working with unusual and exotic foods or catering for a range of demanding clients. The challenges not only test their skills in the kitchen, but also uncover if they have the customer service, management and teamwork abilities required of a Top Chef. The competing chefs live and breathe the high-pressure lifestyle that comes with being a master chef, and each week someone is asked to "pack up their knives" and go home.

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