Gail was off for last night’s Top Chef but will be back next week. For Gail-less weeks of the Bravo series, turn to EW.com to find out which judge will be blogging. This week, host/judge Padma Lakshmi shares her thoughts on last night’s challenges. (As told to Archana Ram.)

Last night we had an incredibly hard Quickfire. I really felt for the cheftestants because what they had to do was very difficult in the time they had. Frenching all those lamb chops is really difficult and it has to be done really perfectly. Turning the artichokes — those are things you have to do with precision and anytime there’s speed involved, the precision suffers. It was really striking a balance between the precision and the clock, which is always an issue on our show. The clock is their worst enemy. They knew the faster they got done, the more the time they’d have to cook and that’s what they’d be judged on, but if they took too long, they were never going to get to cook, and so on.

There were times when David Chang would get close to the chefs to check out their work, and I purposefully hung back because I didn’t want to be in their way. Normally, when we go around for the Quickfire, I’m right there like the guest judge, but I just wanted to give them space because they were so frenzied, and they had knives in their hands. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Kelsey McNeal/Bravo(As told to Archana Ram) The biggest challenge as a responsible adult cooking for kids is you want to make it nutritious and taste great, too. The problem is a child’s palate always wants the sweetest, junkiest foods and that can trip people up, which is what it did for many people in last night’s Quickfire. It was difficult for our chefs to separate what they were being asked to do: Cook something for the kids that would be chosen by the adults — at least for the first half of the challenge.

Joe Jonas — heartthrob, musician extraordinaire — narrowed it to the top two and we let the diners decide, and of course they went for the more sugary dessert, but it was also the most fun. There was no problem with Tiffani’s being sugary because we didn’t tell her not to make it sugary. That wasn’t the challenge at hand. It was supposed to be a fun decadent treat. Hers was fun and played to familiar flavors in a new form the kids probably hadn’t seen before. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Kelsey McNeal/BravoHi, guys! Welcome to my very first Top Chef All-Stars blog!*

All too often, a fan favorite or a person who we know is really excellent doesn’t win. So I think Bravo thought, “Let’s bring back all those people—who we’re constantly being asked about, who are on our radar, who we know our audience loves—to compete against each other.” This season, there’s nothing separating the best from the weakest.

I have nothing to do with the casting process, but when All-Stars was announced, people were writing and tweeting me about Kevin Gillespie and Brian Voltaggio [from season 6], two of the most compelling characters and the most talented chefs we’ve ever had. It would’ve been pretty amazing to see them compete. And I’m sure Sam Talbot would’ve been a great competitor. There are so many people I would’ve loved to have seen who either weren’t available or perhaps weren’t even asked.

As for those who made it, I was curious to see how the familiarity factor played out. I became friendly with many of the contestants after they left the show, and the culinary world is a small place, so once you’re on Top Chef, you become a part of this family. When we first walked on the set in The Russian Tea Room and I saw them all, I had this instinct to run up to them — “Hey! How are you? How’s your wife? How’s your son?” — but of course I had to stop myself. But it’s almost easier to be impartial because there’s no one who can claim any sort of edge when they’re all that good.

The contestants also arrived in a different head space. READ FULL STORY »