Season Six of Bravo’s cooking-competition show Top Chef, which premiered last night, has the potential to be the Jew-heaviest season yet (although in this regard it faces stiff competition from last season, which was won by one Hosea Rosenberg). Based on the name game alone, we count, to varying degrees of certainty (we’re pretty sure about Eli Kirshstein), five Members of the Tribe among the 17 contestants. And one of them, Seattle chef Robin Leventhal, put her heritage front and center last night. The challenge for the chefs was to present a dish based on a vice of theirs, in homage to this season’s location, Las Vegas. Chef Leventhal announced that her vice was being a “bad Jew,” and with that in mind served up a pork tenderloin stuffed with chorizo, alongside bread pudding and a strip of bacon. Perhaps her vice got the better of her: she did not win, and first prize went to a dish—arctic char (slow-cooked, in deference to the chef’s vice of procrastination) with turnip salsa verde—that looked both absolutely scrumptious and perfectly kosher.
Top Chef [Bravotv.com]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.