Top Chef returns

The Bravo series returns on Wednesday night. Judges Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi had a conference call last week to talk about the program, now in it's fifth season.

By PATRICIA TALORICO

The News Journal

Tom Colicchio isn't bored by wacky molecular gastronomic cooking techniques.

Yet any of the 17 contestants who want to win "Top Chef: New York" had better back away from the truffle oil.

Colicchio, head judge of the Bravo TV cooking series that premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday night, said there are no real culinary "deal breakers" for him.

"This season, we see some very basic, but well done food," he said by telephone from Los Angeles.

But, Colicchio adds, "the ingredient I don't want to see? Truffle oil. Mostly because there's no truffle in there at all."

Cookbook author, actress and "Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi agrees.

"I really roll my eyes at truffle oil," she said during a conference call last Friday. (According to a 2007 New York Times article, most commercial truffle oils are flavored with a lab-created chemical compound and not the real and rare fungus.)

Guest judges appearing on the fifth season of the Emmy and James Beard Award-winning cable series this season include Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich, Eric Ripert, Martha Stewart, and, weirdly enough, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.

Colicchio said episodes this season have all been filmed, except for the finale which will take place in January at as yet unchosen location. Previous seasons had been set in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago.

This year, taping took place in and around New York City - home for both Lakshmi and Colicchio.

Being on their home turf had both benefits and drawbacks for the judges.

Lakshmi said she usually gains about 10 to 15 pounds over the course of the series. "The amount of food consumed is staggering," she said.

But this time, Lakshmi said she could keep the creeping pounds at bay by working out in her own gym. "I gained less weight this season because I was at home," she said.

However, Colicchio, who has lost 20 pounds since the first season of "Top Chef" began in 2006 – "Tom is probably better at taking small bites than I am," Lakshmi joked – actually found it more difficult to be close to home.

"We'd go back to our regular lives once we left the set. It was hard to get back into the mindset of the show," he said.

The format of the series this season remains the same. Contestants compete first in a "Quickfire Challenge" and and then in an "Elimination Challenge" before heading to the judges' table, where the best and worst dishes are decided and losers pack up their knives and depart.

The winner gets the title of Top Chef and $100,000 to start a restaurant.

The biggest change this season is the addition of judge Toby Young, a British food critic and author.

"He was brash. He was opinionated. He was very witty. You know his book was ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’? He lived up to that," Colicchio said.

Young replaces food writer, cookbook author and former "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" star Ted Allen.

Colicchio said that, since Allen's Food Network series "Food Detectives" was recently renewed, he could no longer be a part of "Top Chef."

"They [the Food Network] have a policy that they can't do our show,” he said. On his blog on Ted Allen.net, Allen wrote "I've had enviable luck, in my opinion, at getting away with judging food on two competing networks over these past five seasons of "Top Chef" and "Iron Chef America." But I knew all along that if I ever got a larger presence on some other show, I was going to have to commit to one network or another.

"Food Network, it is!"

So, if truffle oil is the way to lose on "Top Chef," what’s the secret to winning?

"Think before you charge into the challenges," Lakshmi said. "Taking that few minutes to compose an idea and think 'How can I hit this challenge out of the park?' "

Colicchio is even more straightforward: "The strategy to winning is making great food."