Man, we loved last season of . So much so, that we're gonna keep writing about it, even though it's made the move to Los Angeles. Top Chef, for those who don't know, is a show on Bravo that's basically The Apprentice with less jargon, more food, and a lot less suckage. And it used to be based here in our fair city. Alas . . . In any case, it airs every Wednesday night; due to our inability to write quickly, we've committed to posting reviews of the prior week on the day that the new episodes are set to appear, to hype lovers of food-based TV for that night.

Top Chef was great in its inaugural season, but it seems the producers wanted to rebuild it . . . make it better, faster, stronger (or whatever). So, goodbye to stiff puppet Katie Lee Joel, hello to another married-to-a-celeb hostess in the form of smoking hot Padma Lakshmi (wife of Salman Rushdie). Unlike Katie Lee, Padma's a legit celeb in her own right, though, having been a supermodel, movie actress, established cookbook writer, and hostess of some other TV shows.

They also amped up the number of contestants to 15. Dude, doesn't that seem like kind of a lot? We hope you, the readers, don't expect the laundry list of contestants from us. If you want that, go to Bravo's site for the show. We're just gonna come hard at you with the opinions and highlights as we saw them.

Top Chef