Four Burning Questions About 'Top Chef'

I haven't been a 'Top Chef' fan for its entire run, but I've been watching it long enough to notice that a few odd things come up here and there, some involving the cheftestants themselves and others about the show in general. And all of it makes me scratch my head, just a little bit:

Why do so many of the chefs smoke? In a scene from last week's episode, Amanda is being grilled (pun intended) by Angelo and a few of her fellow cheftestants about her cooking methods. What struck me about this scene is that just about everyone in that scene was smoking (probably the house's designated smoking spot).

I know being a chef is a very stressful job, and I get that smoking is a way to deal with that stress. But when your palate is key to doing your job well, you have to wonder why these chefs would purposely handicap themselves by smoking, which has been shown to dull a person's taste buds.

It's like an opera singer screaming until she's hoarse or a hand model working in the garden without gloves. No wonder why some of these chefs think they "nailed" a dish that the judges think is horrible; they're tasting it with a layer of tar on their tongues.



Is Bravo asking Padma to smile more this year? One thing I've noticed about the show over the seasons is that Padma Lakshmi has generally been very serious in her hosting duties. Sure, she'd break out a smile once in a blue moon, but she usually conducted herself with that self-serious look that you usually see on models parading down the runway.

But this year, we're seeing her smile more. She smiles to the contestants. She smiles in the advertisements. She smiles to the pack of grade school kids who were part of last week's challenge. She even tells people to "pack you knives and go" in a happier tone. Could the folks at Bravo -- screw it, I'll just come out and say it's Andy Cohen -- asking Padma to smile more? Or is it just the fact that she's a new mother and no longer has to put up with Salman Rushdie making her happier?

Doesn't anyone wear a hat? There are reasons why health codes exist; you don't want to be dining in a fine establishment only to see some hair in your food or, god forbid, something far more phlegmy. One of those regulations, at least in most of the country, is that food handlers need to wear hats or hairnets.

Yet it seems that when a vast majority of the cheftestants set out to cook in the 'Top Chef' kitchen, either in the quickfire or the main challenge, they do so bare-headed. For those with no hair, that's fine. But for the rest, that's just plain wrong. When the contestants serve the meals out in public, the show seems to require everyone to wear a hat. Why don't they keep the same hygiene standards in the kitchen? Luckily, John and his Predator-esque braids were eliminated in the first week; I was not in the mood to see Eric Ripert pull hairballs out of his ceviche.

Do the judges really bounce the chef with the worst dish every week? If you read Tom Colicchio's blog, he usually lays out pretty reasoned and logical criteria for why he and his fellow judges eliminated a chef in a particular week. And he's said over and over that each chef is judged only on what he or she produced in the elimination challenge that week, with no consideration given to what that chef has done in the past or how his or her personality means to the season.

I believe him... to an extent. Neither Colicchio nor any of the judges see the chefs interacting at the house, in the kitchen, or in the stew room. They don't see the side interviews. So all they really know about the chefs is their food. I can buy that the crew isn't cluing them in on who's got the bigger personality and who's a wet blanket.

But I can't imagine that one bad week would really sink an otherwise stellar contestant. If that was the case, then the finalists would always be the ones that just slid by and did the bare minimum to stay. Usually, those contestants are either exposed or they end up stepping up their game eventually (Carla from season five being a good example). But the finalists tend to be the best of the bunch. Which leads me to believe that the good ones never have a bad week or there's a wee bit of goodwill for those folks amongst the judges. It's only natural, right?

What parts of 'Top Chef' make you scratch your head?