Top Chef All-Stars

The season will premiere on December 1, 2010.[1]

Judges

* Tom Colicchio (Head Judge)
* Padma Lakshmi (Host)
* Gail Simmons (Judge)
* Anthony Bourdain (Judge)

Bourdain is new to the show as a judge in Season 8. Colicchio, Lakshmi and Simmons returned from Season 7.[2]
[edit] Contestants

There are 18 past Top Chef contestants competing in Season 8. Names below are from the Bravo website.[3] In alphabetical order:

* Elia Aboumrad, Season 2
* Stephen Asprinio, Season 1
* Richard Blais, Season 4
* Jennifer Carroll, Season 6
* Tiffany Derry, Season 7
* Tiffani Faison, Season 1
* Carla Hall, Season 5
* Mike Isabella, Season 6
* Jamie Lauren, Season 5
* Dale Levitski, Season 3
* Antonia Lofaso, Season 4
* Spike Mendelsohn, Season 4
* Angelo Sosa, Season 7
* Dale Talde, Season 4
* Casey Thompson, Season 3
* Marcel Vigneron, Season 2
* Fabio Viviani, Season 5
* Tre Wilcox, Season 3

Potential for awesomeness, though I don't know they'll ever have as strong a group of chefs as season 6.

Wasn't Bourdain supposed to join as a judge last season?

Excited!

well, i know who i want to LOSE

and i want everyone else to win!

whoa i would not have recognized jamie

this was a great idea -- the chefs last season were of such low quality, whereas this season maybe not every chef has a chance of winning, but it probably won't be like last season where they were just slicing off the most low hanging fruit every episode

i never bought angelo as season 7 villain because he was legit more talented than like everyone on that show, but i'm not sure i'm ready to have him back in my life

FABIO ON THE OTHER HAND

would immediately wife elia

seeing Tiffany and Dale in this is like, the 40-year-old dudes from season one MTV Real World that are still on The Inferno Part 7

sorry Stephen not Dale. Dale's cool.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

elimination challenge was cruel and ingenious

Can I just....

<3 TRE!!!!! <3

yes you can

Also: my girl crush on Jen is back in full effect

mine too! ^^^<3<3<3^^^

wait wha..

Lol :D

Damn I kind of love everyone

Though confession: I didn't watch S5 and judging from Fabio etc, I'm kinda glad? WTF

oh man he's so funny

he was being a bit butthurt tonight tho -- also he's not really a great chef, but he's got a huge personality so they prob had to a. bring him back b. not kick him off tonight

AHM NUT SLIPPING ON A BONK BEHD

Casey's new restaurant is pretty close to me and relatively affordable. Wil have to try it soon.

yeah, review please!

background picture on her website kinda looks like she's selling anti-depressants or feminine hygiene products
http://www.chefcaseythompson.com/

Lol. Welcome to my new restaurant "Midol"

he was being a bit butthurt tonight tho

haha, a "bit"? he basically told Bourdain "say that about my food again and I will fight you"

Interesting seeing these people after a few years: o_0 at Jamie's tattoos.

Also, to echo upthread, the elimination challenge was ingenious. I was thinking, if you were told to pack your knives and go based off of your last dish, wouldn't you go back and master that motherfucker? It seems like most of the chefs did just that and the one who went home didn't.

Certain people really had an advantage though ... like Angelo's dish was probably pretty good to begin with, it was just the least good among the three dishes that were meant to send people to the finale. On the other hand two of the ones that seemed really tough to fix ended up in the top (Spike & Dale).

Awesome challenge, although pretty unfair to Stephen, so I'm glad he will have one more chance to cook "his" food. I don't think he'll last long, but at least he gets a fair shot.

Will be disappointed if Jen doesn't walk away w/this.

A little early for predictions, but I think this is Blais' to lose.

Even if he was DQ'ed last night.

Bourdain chalking up his slam on Fabio to being too familiar with Italian food and knocking back too many gin and tonics with Collicchio during the taping:

http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef/season-8/blogs/anthony-bourdain/the-sorrows-of-gin?page=0,0

i'm glad to know that they get drunk

referring often to his original "Scallops with Butterscotch Sauce" as an experience akin to "felching Mrs. Butterworth."

omg

<3 Bourdain, so glad he's judging.

Hoping that Jen doesn't lose her mojo again, and that her & Blais go toe to toe.

I didn't like Stephen much in S1, and he seems not very much improved since then. It's like he thinks that *he* is the selling point of his dishes, and not the food. I don't get his appeal at all.

haha bourdain's mea culpa is almost harsher than his comments on the show

I mean, look at that thing. Its supreme ugliness only reinforced and highlighted by its presentation on paper, bringing to mind immediately and inevitably, the command oft directed at a bad puppy: "Go on the paper! The paper!!"

bourdain would prolly kick fabio's ass tho

and wtf is so great abt jen? she's lame dudes

can't wait to see dale punching shit and yelling again

i missed season 6, and yeah, i don't get what's so great about Jen.

seems like Elia totally deserved to go home but i love her! sad

oh wait Elia got bounced ALREADY

boo

Jen works for Eric Ripert, which gives her automatic cred in my book. And I thought she was the #1 contender halfway through her season, before she started cracking under the pressure.

Love how everyone still hates Marcel's guts.

I love Jen because she seems like a serious alcoholic and yet has a cool job.

http://eater.com/uploads/IMAGEisabellaslap.gif

Jen has balls of steel & she rocks fuiud

^^^

Love how everyone still hates Marcel's guts.

― boots get knocked from here to czechoslovakier (milo z), Thursday, December 2, 2010 2:00 PM (1 hour ago)

Having hair like Wolverine just screams douchebag in my book.

Marcel's a tool but I like him more than Stephen.

Elia made me sad. I think that maybe since she didn't think anything was wrong with her dish in the first place, she didn't re-work it smartly enough. Plus maybe there's the fact that her losing dish didn't kick her ass like, say Spike's scallops did. Or Dale's butterscotch nightmare. Or poor Blais and his flameout. You know? She didn't feel like the dish defined her as some kind of failure so she didn't think she had anything to prove except that she can cook. I dunno. Love her.
LOVED seeing that old clip of her shaving her head btw.

in my dream world, jen would hire mike, tre, carla, and the bearded southern guy from season 5 in the awesomest restaurant ever

tbh i got pretty tired of this guy by the end of the season

got pretty tired of the season by the end of the season

My wife jumped up and celebrated when that guy won. Not because she liked him, but she just really disliked the other guy...was he really that unlikeable???

got pretty tired of the season by the end of the season

― slight even by tweet standards (forksclovetofu), Thursday, March 31, 2011 9:13 AM (2 minutes ago)

otm!
seems like they stretched out the final rounds at least one episode too many

Mike really is kind of unlikeable but I think that's a case of editing as opposed to Marcel who really does seem like a dick

yeah, Mike is amiably abrasive but at least has some recognition/acknowledgment of social cues and graces, whereas Marcel is basically a monster.

but can you really be a "Top Chef" unless you are a little bit touched in the head??

I only ask this because the head chefs at both of my favorite restaurants eventually went insane

You can be a raging egomaniac without also being a belittling freak, yes.

i really grew to like mike a lot more and was kinda rooting for him because blais was the favorite and he was really starting to annoy me by about half-way through the season.

Mike was extra-dickish early on and checked his behavior as the season progressed. Especially after they went to the Bahamas. I wonder how long the break was before those last few episodes -- Mike seemed a lot more chill and Blais seemed 5x more neurotic.

Jen Carrol looking totally wasted in the background shots was great

ha, yeah, I see her as the chef that goes out drinking with the waiters after the last shift and ends up making out with a gay guy around the fifth margarita and crying in a bathroom
"WHY DO I ALWAYS DO THIS" *pukes*

I pictured her backstage putting lipstick around her mouth like Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart.

Chocolate vinaigrette? No, thank you.

i wanted to taste this pepperoni sauce!

everybody seemed wasted on the Bravo Live after-show

Blais was getting super annoying with his "I already choked once before" mantra but I'm glad he won. otherwise they might have had to put him on suicide watch.

yeah, they were all tanked!
padma seemed especially loopy.

also I watched half an episode of that Marcel show on Syfy and goddam it is unwatchable. Marcel is such a douche, why anyone would give him a show is beyond me. it's not "love to hate," it's "hate hate hate must change channel."

padma seemed especially loopy.

otm

also was that bit about her and Gail noshing on bacon at the craft services table for real?? lol.

andy cohen is always OTT on that show but toward the end he seemed legit sloshed

also lol @ Mike predicting that Jen might have won fan favorite

yeah he progressed from his usual andy cohen-ness to like, flat out wasted and messy at the end!

Who won fan favorite? Bravo's site is useless.

carla!

oh damn i missed the after show party thing . i was just loling at jen looking all jacked in the background of the actual finally

Cool, Carla is who I would have voted for. I had a bit of nerves when Mike put her at front-of-house last night, since she did a terrible job of that earlier in the season.

it was Carla vs Fabio (which was what Richard predicted when asked ... like, duh). Mike said he thought maybe Jen would get it.

was sort of impressive (although totally insane) that Blais sent Spike out to spy on the first round of judges and then actually changed -- and successfully improved! -- one of his dishes before the second group of judges arrived. kudos, you neurotic nutjob.

It's weird that he had issues with the foie gras ice cream. His burger restaurant has foie gras milkshakes on the menu. I've heard they're really good.

that sounded disgusting to me.

yeah dnw

If I were a contestant on this show, part of the appeal would be cooking without having to think too much about food costs. Ten lobes (at first I thought he said "loaves") of foie gras, that's a few dollars, right?

xp -- I'd definitely give it a taste

that first round of foie ice cream looked like cat food

my cat would've eaten it

coulda been editing tricks but after Tom's comments on Mike's first two dishes I thought Mike was winning for sure

me too!

But they made a point, one that Mike will probably be hearing till he dies, that Tom said "this is the best fish I've ever tasted on the show" then later he said he loved Richards and someone said "well you said Mike's was the best you'd ever tasted" and Tom said "that was before I ate Richards!"

brutal

coulda been editing tricks but after Tom's comments on Mike's first two dishes I thought Mike was winning for sure

― dmr, Thursday, March 31, 2011 6:16 PM (3 hours ago)

And then the editing on the judging table made Tom look all gung-ho about Richard: "that was until I tasted Richard's fish"

I thought Mike won that second dish for sure. I was rooting for Mike (all alone at my house). His dick moves earlier this season were sort of tame. I liked how Mike was always jovial and had that hint of sensitivity (femininity). I liked how he chose not to make a big deal out of everything (total opposite of Richard in that way); of course he still played the game and tried to say everything the judges wanted to hear. I like that he has such high self-esteem - he did prove himself to be a great chef. Mike rooting for Jen as one of the fan favorites was probably just because he's friends with her, and was probably drinking with her before that live segment started (his giggling got tiresome but I can excuse joviality).

I'm sure the producers of Top Chef wanted Richard to win too. They would be the ultimate tie-breaker

sort of like how on the season finales of American Race the least liked team always gets the shittiest cab driver. surprise surprise

sensitivity (femininity)

on the after-show a viewer question asked Richard "who would you battle next?" and he was like, "Michael Voltaggio"

thought Andy Cohen was gonna get out his blackberry on set start emailing Michael V with his show proposal

The second episode of Marcel's quantum cooking show was a lot better than the first one. He is more likable when he is in his element - which includes him being the boss. He threw a pretty great anniversary party on the second episode. He gave shit to the lady he was working for at the end of second episode. I understood why - unlike on top chef. Ultimately, his show gives me more respect for Marcel but I'm not interested enough in Marcel or quantum cooking to put this on my series manager.

Gonna have to read this whole thread tomorrow. I started with this series and it's the first I've watched.

Guess that technically spoiled like all seven seasons before it. Oops.

i’m almost through World All Stars (currently streaming on Peacock) — and after so many seasons of this series i’m surprised that it might be one of my favorites overall? super good

the stories of all the different chefs, the sharing of cultures, the insane high level of skill plus the intensity of the challenges (holy shit @ the beef wellington challenge) … it’s so good. and so many favorite contestants , new and old: love begoña from spain, victoire from italy, tom from germany, gabri from mexico, buddha from houston and my alltime top chef boyfriend amar from cali <3

the friendship between aman and ali was so cute

it’s a lot of fun & well worth it if you like the series

*amar

agreed, I thought my interest in TC might be waning but this season really hit. apparently Padma’s leaving the show and knowing that made the season finale even more touching

Top Chef: Wisconsin is out with new host Kristen Kish.

Looking forward to Wisconsin getting the TC treatment. Cheese challenge, what else?

yeah i’m interested to see Kristin hosting!