TVSquad

Top Chef Masters returns to Bravo tonight (after a week off), but some fans aren't into this more "professional" edition of the reality show and are waiting patiently (or maybe not too patiently) for the "real" Top Chef to return. You only have about six more weeks to wait.

Top Chef Las Vegas will premiere on August 26. According to the press release, we're going to see a lot of stars in this season too (only not as contestants, of course), including Penn & Teller, Todd English, Natalie Portman, Wolfgang Puck, Charlie Palmer, Daniel Bouland, and Nigella Lawson. Padma Lakshmi will be back as host, along with judges Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons, and Toby Young (who a lot of fans don't seem to like that much, at least in his role here).

This could be a very fun season, considering what Las Vegas is like (as famous now for its restaurants as its gambling).

The New York season of Top Chef has been fun, albeit a bit predictable. It seems like in every one of the episodes, you can peg who's going to be eliminated by the time Padma, Colicchio and company hit the judges' table. Even this week's addition of the Simon Cowell-like Toby Young as the new judge didn't derail the elimination train from its ultimate destination: the ouster of the two chefs everyone thought were in over their heads to begin with.

The fun part is that the producers are throwing challenges at the chefs that are pretty brilliant in their deviousness. For instance, last night the chefs had to cook for their potentially toughest critics... their fellow competitors. The results were mixed, to say the least. As in the previous weeks, the food produced by the chefs was mostly mediocre or uninspired. The people that challenged themselves ended up falling on their faces.

Which leads me to this question for you all: Would you eat at any of the contestants' restaurants? Follow me after the jump and I'll explain.