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Thank God for Top Chef. Better yet, thank God for food on television. Most of us will never (or rarely) have the opportunity to eat at a gourmet restaurant. Thanks to the Food Network and by extension Top Chef exotic food is suddenly accessible to the masses — just not to, y’know, eat.

Like any reality competition program the first two weeks are tough because they have to at least pretend like all fifteen characters actually matter despite the producers already knowing who ultimately does and who won’t. It’s also tough because we, the audience, have to pick our favorites based on those few, fleeting moments of personality that sneak through in the few seconds of interaction between the contestant and the judges.

Here are the characters that stuck out to me:

Padme (the host) — have I mentioned how incredibly hot she is?

Clay — early in the episode you kind of got the feeling that Clay was going to be the underdog who made a serious dent in the competition but then the challenges started and we realized that he simply didn’t have the talent that the rest of the group has.

Joey — I hate Joey. I hate his cliché Italian Goomba persona. Joey is this year’s Marcel.

Sandee — We haven’t seen much from her in terms of cooking so far, but Sandee definitely has the coolest look. Mohawks on women are cool right?

Camille — There seem to be few overt female personalities (at least so far) and Camille isn’t one of them, but she certainly seems pleasant. Camille, Hung and Tre are all on my radar.

Hung — We learned in last week’s all-star matchup that Hung is good friends with Marcel. It seems obvious now as both are incredibly determined, though Hung doesn’t have Marcel’s vanity or crazy hair. He also seems to be the better chef — or at least doesn’t have the foam crutch.

Tre — Tre is awesome. Not only did he win the challenge last night, but the way he praised Hung’s food seemed exceptionally genial.

Also brilliant this week was the highly inventive challenge (I’m shocked they can still find new ways of exploiting ingredient combinations and contestant handicaps) as well as Anthony Bourdain as guest judge (I loved when he called said to Howie “You son of bitch!” when Howie countered his criticism on him by quoting Bourdain’s own book — classic!).

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Bravo, Top Chef. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.