Top Chef Double Whammy Tonight on Bravo

Bravo pulls out all the chefs

Hubert Keller won the most recent challenge on "Top Chef Masters." Will he be deemed the master?

A “Top Chef” premiere and finale in the same night?! It sounds too good to be true to fans of Bravo’s biggest moneymaker, “Top Chef,” but I triple checked the facts, and it’s true! Tonight at 9 p.m. the new season of “Top Chef” begins.
Then, the other moment we’ve all been waiting for: the “Top Chef Masters” finale! I almost can’t stand the excitement.

“Top Chef” Season 6

I don’t think there is a faxless payday loan big enough to pay for a party that would do this event justice. This sixth season of “Top Chef” will be set in Las Vegas. Just to make this whole situation even better, the first episode of “Top Chef: Las Vegas” is extra long, clocking in at an hour and 15 minutes.

The show tonight features 17 chefs, and you can read bios on all of them at BravoTV.com. There are chefs from all over the U.S. plus one chef from France, one from Haiti and one from Puerto Rico.

“Top Chef Masters”

After the super-sized episode of “Top Chef: Las Vegas,” the season finale of “Top Chef Masters” begins at 10:15. The masters are down to just three: Hubert Keller, Rick Bayless and Michael Chiarello. The winner among these seasoned chefs will get $100,000 donated to his chosen charity in his name.

“Top Chef Masters” played with the format of “Top Chef” while still placing the focus of the show on food and cooking. The first six episodes of “Top Chef Masters” each featured four chefs. On each episode, one winner was chosen to compete with the other winners. The “Top Chef Masters” were generous all along the way. Each contestants chose charities in the beginning that would receive money if they won, but every charity ended up getting a donation, and during each episode the winner’s charity got $10,000.

Brilliant business

“Top Chef” is Bravo’s most popular, lucrative show, and I think the format tonight is a great move on Bravo’s part that will have millions upon millions of viewers tuning in. If the “Top Chef” season six premiere wasn’t enough to get viewers to plan their evening around it or the “Top Chef Masters” finale wasn’t incentive enough to convince people to tune in, both paired together will sure make people think twice about what they will be doing tonight.
Furthermore, if “Top Chef Masters” fans somehow forgot about the “Top Chef” premiere or don’t know about the extra 15 minutes, they’ll tune in at the usual time, 10 p.m., and voila, they’ll likely get hooked on “Top Chef: Las Vegas.” After all, the final 15 minutes are the most exciting. How can people resist? I don’t think there’s any other programming on cable tonight that will even begin to compete with this premiere/finale “Top Chef” event tonight.