TVSquad

Man, Top Chef has gained some serious momentum these past few weeks. The hazing incident, the tight-lipped complaints about Padma, the crappy, producer-driven elimination of Sam in favor of an Ilan vs. Marcel match-up. (Got spoilers? Oh, yeah, but don't click here unless you want to know who gets paprika-ed in the end.) Today's Top Chef bombshell - Padma's a pothead, and I'm not referring to her affinity for Le Creuset cookware. According to our friends over at Best Week Ever, Padma enjoys toking up on the set. Allegedly, this was a fairly regular occurrence.

I resisted the temptations of Project Runway's sister series Top Chef for the entirety of its first season. In my mind, America's obsession with celebrity chefs and food porn has resulted in only two things I can get behind - the pop communist iconography of the original, subtitled Iron Chef and gonzo chef Anthony Bourdain's macho prose on sex, drugs and eats.

This season, however, I've been completely suckered into the hot-and-heavy drama. I could chalk up my new fixation to a lost weekend, a bottle of scotch and a Bravo marathon, but I actually think the show has improved. Tom Colicchio, while no Tim Gunn, wears his quiet exasperation well. And, replacing former host Katie Lee Joel, Billy Joel's wife, with Padma Lakshmi, Salman Rushdie's wife, was a step in the right direction. Padma may not have much more going on in the spokesmodel department than Katie Lee, but you can always look at her and go, "Holy smokes. I guess surviving a fatwa qualifies you to date waaaaay out of your league."