Latest news with #TopChef
The Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Top Chef alum Padma Lakshmi, 54, glows in a plunging bikini in steamy Blue Lagoon spa on Iceland trip
PADMA Lakshmi looked incredible in a plunging black bikini on her recent trip with her daughter. The former Top Chef host, 54, traveled to Iceland with Krishna, 15, and lounged at the famous thermal spa, Blue Lagoon. 9 9 9 Padma appeared half her age as she kicked back with Krishna in the steamy blue waters. "If you're planning a trip this summer, Iceland is a great option! #Littlehands and I went over spring break, and there's so much to see and do," she wrote in the caption, referring to her sweet nickname for Krishna. "You might not catch the northern lights this time of year, but at least it won't be as cold!!!" She also shared photos of the mother/daughter duo riding horses, watching a geyser, posing in front of a snow-topped mountain, visiting the Hallgrímskirkja church, and even catching the northern lights. Fans were more impressed with Padma's beauty than the breathtaking Icelandic scenery. "You look absolutely stunning!" one follower said. "A beautiful person," another chimed in. "Padma is just turning back the clock!" chimed in a third. Padma Lakshmi, 53, takes a dip in pool in tiny yellow bikini on Portugal vacation after quitting Top Chef MOVING ON Padma appears to have more time for relaxation after quitting Top Chef after 20 seasons in 2023. After 17 years, many of the cast and crew are like family to me and I will miss working alongside them dearly," she said, adding that she planned to focus on her Hulu travel show. "I feel it's time to move on and need to make space for Taste the Nation, my books and other creative pursuits." Top Chef winner Kristen Kish took over as host. After leaving the show, Padma has also focused on modeling and being a mom, of course. Last summer, Padma celebrated Krishna's graduation from middle school. "I can't believe my baby girl is off to high school after the summer," Padma posted. "I want to thank all of the teachers, educators, counselors, security and staff at the United Nations School for taking care of Krishna all these years. "I'm so proud of Krishna and all she has achieved in her young, happy life. Special thanks to the theater department at UNIS and all the wonderful members of the parents association. "I'll miss you guys at the snack bar! As Littlehands would say... gurl, bye!" Padma welcomed Krishna in 2010 with venture capitalist Adam Dell. 9 9 9 9 9
New York Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Andy Cohen officially says goodbye to NYC penthouse of 20 years
From Bravo to Broadway, Andy Cohen is officially saying goodbye to his longtime home. Emmy-winning playwright and screenwriter Danny Strong and his partner, actor and producer Caitlin Mehner, have officially closed on Cohen's longtime West Village penthouse duplex for its full $12 million asking price, The Post has learned. The deal, which was finalized on June 26, caps a swift transaction that entered contract just over a month earlier. 11 Emmy-winning playwright and screenwriter Danny Strong and his partner, actor/producer Caitlin Mehner, have officially closed on Andy Cohen's penthouse duplex at 2 Horatio Street for its $12 million asking price. Getty Images for Prime Video The 3,500-square-foot co-op, located at 2 Horatio Street, was assembled over two decades by Cohen, the Bravo star and producer behind 'Watch What Happens Live' and 'Top Chef.' Designed by architect Gordon Kahn with interiors by Eric Hughes, the home is known for its bold use of color, sweeping views of Manhattan landmarks, and dramatic custom details — including a sculptural walnut, steel and glass staircase connecting its two levels. 11 The 3,500-square-foot West Village co-op, which overlooks Jackson Square Park, entered into contract in May after eight months on the market and initially listed for $14 million. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images Strong, whose musical Chess heads to Broadway this fall, called the duplex 'my dream home,' previously telling The Post, 'We are so excited to be moving there.' He and Mehner, new parents to a 7-month-old daughter, had been looking for more space to accommodate their growing family. 11 Designed by architect Gordon Kahn with interiors by Eric Hughes, the home includes a chef's kitchen, a nanny's room, and a glass-and-steel staircase leading to a home office. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images 11 It features 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, two fireplaces, and striking details like a gold-tiled bar, marble fireplaces, and a spa-like main bathroom with Empire State Building views. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images 11 The couple, now parents to a 7-month-old daughter, cited their growing family as a reason for the move. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images The purchase also marks a bit of a real estate shuffle. Strong is in contract to sell his current residence at 299 West 12th Street — the sam Emery Roth-designed building where Cohen just purchased a new penthouse for $18.21 million, The Post reported. That unit reportedly features over 2,000 square feet of outdoor space, something Cohen had long been seeking. 'Outdoor space was the decision! I always have coveted outdoor space,' Cohen told People. 'There is a dearth of inventory in the West Village with outdoor space, so when I found something that was meaningful enough for me to leave my dream apartment … that's what it took.' 11 The residence occupies 3,500 square feet. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images 11 Strong, who wrote 'Empire,' 'Dopesick,' and two 'Hunger Games' films, is also in contract to sell his unit at 299 W. 12th Street—ironically, the same building where Cohen just bought a new $18.21 million penthouse. Oliver Rodriguez/Shutterstock 11 The wet bar. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images The sale also marked a professional milestone for real estate broker and former Million Dollar Listing New York star Ryan Serhant, who shared news of the contract on Instagram back in May. 'Congrats @bravoandy,' he wrote, adding, 'Thanks for trusting me and @serhant with your home.' Serhant later told The New York Times, 'It's one of those treasures that you wait your whole career for.' Cohen had initially listed the property for $14 million in September 2024 before cutting the price by $2 million earlier this year. The duplex ultimately found a buyer after about eight months on the market. 11 A living space. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images 11 One of two fireplaces in the home. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images 11 An ensuite bathroom. Eytan Stern Weber, Evan Joseph Images Serhant and Donna Strugatz of Serhant represented the listing, while Jonathan Stein of Douglas Elliman represented Strong. Inside, the home features 4.5 bathrooms, two wood-burning fireplaces, wide-plank oak floors, and 25 windows offering views of Jackson Square Park, the Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building. The main suite boasts a custom dressing room, a corner bath with a teak soaking tub, and a marble steam shower. Other highlights include a lacquered bar, a gold-tiled powder room, and a chef's kitchen with cobalt blue cabinetry. Strong is best known for scripting Recount, The Butler, Dopesick, and two Hunger Games films.
Eater
5 days ago
- Business
- Eater
Former Gotham Bar and Grill Building Goes Up for Sale at $6.5 Million
Skip to main content Current eater city: New York Plus, a new Mexican restaurant debuts on the Lower East Side — and more intel Jun 27, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC After several closings and rebrandings, Gotham Bar and Grill officially called it quits at the end of last year. Now, Crain's New York reports that the 12 E. 12th Street building is up for sale for $6.5 million — including the 4,220-square-foot restaurant with additional basement storage, plus the 12 floors of condos above it. Gotham Bar and Grill first opened in 1984 with esteemed chef Alfred Portale; in 2019, the restaurant decided to shake things up, bringing on Victoria Blamey to reimagine the menu. It closed in 2020 as the pandemic hit in New York, before rebooting for a third time in 2021, dropping bar and grill from the name as well. Chef Ron Paprocki, a former Gotham pastry chef, most recently led the kitchen. But, earlier in 2024, the restaurant was a victim of a cyberattack in which it lost $45,000, and the financial drawbacks factored into the restaurant's decision to permanently call it quits. Comal opened this week from Gaz Herbert, the former executive chef at the King team's Jupiter in Rockefeller Center. Herbert, who is British but grew up in Mexico, serves dishes like lengua al pastor, mussels with corn custard, crispy sweetbread with pineapple and tortilla, and skate wing guiso. He's joined in the kitchen by head chef Scott McKay, an Acru and Atomix alum. The restaurant is located in what was Gem Wine, 116 Forsyth Street, between Broome and Delancey streets. Nuyores is on the way to 154 W. 13th Street, near Seventh Avenue, from chef Oscar Lorenzzi — the space was previously Il Totano, which closed abruptly after just a few months, from Top Chef's first-ever winner, Harold Dieterle, in partnership with Alexandra Shapiro of the Upper East Side's Flex Mussels and Hoexters (neither is involved in the new venture). Most recently, Lorenzzi oversaw the kitchen at East Harlem's Contento, which closed with a particularly heartfelt post following its focus on accessibility. At his new restaurant, Lorenzzi is looking to give a New York spin to the Peruvian cooking he's come to be known for, with dishes under $30. See More: Coming Attractions Intel NYC Restaurant Openings
Time Magazine
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
In Season 4, 'The Bear' Has—Quite Literally—Lost the Plot
This article contains extremely minor spoilers for The Bear Season 4. You can't go wrong putting delicious-looking food and the perfectionist chefs who cook it on TV. That was the lesson of Food Network's rise in the 1990s. It held true throughout the Y2K reality boom; stalwart competitions like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen are still on the air after more than 20 seasons. Anthony Bourdain created his own subgenre of culturally aware, personality-driven food-travel shows that has persisted, since his death, in variations on the format from Padma Lakshmi, Stanley Tucci, Phil Rosenthal, and others. The streaming era has yielded a cornucopia of beautifully shot food programs: Chef's Table, Omnivore, High on the Hog, Salt Fat Acid Heat. All of which is to say that, though it's understood to have been a surprise hit, FX's The Bear was well placed to become the phenomenon it is. The rare scripted series set in a restaurant, its first two seasons combined all the enticements of the best nonfiction food TV with the propulsive tale of a grieving, Paul-Newman-lookalike master chef (Jeremy Allen White) who toils to transform his family's Italian beef joint into a fine-dining mecca worthy of a Michelin star. Like many popular food shows, The Bear makes for satisfying comfort viewing even when the narrative is lacking. Be that as it may, its fourth season, now streaming in full on Hulu, so exacerbates the stagnation that set in during Season 3 that it's bound to make all but the least demanding fans impatient. The show still looks scrumptious. But it has, quite literally, lost the plot. Following the frenzied efforts of White's Carmy Berzatto, in Season 1, to save The Original Beef of Chicagoland, formerly operated by his recently deceased brother Mikey (John Bernthal), and Season 2's transformation of the space and its staff in preparation of its rebirth as culinary destination The Bear, the third season chronicled the new spot's rough start. Carmy chose his work over his burgeoning relationship with Claire (Molly Gordon), pushing himself towards artistic excellence—and his employees towards madness—with a new menu every day. His unwillingness to compromise made the restaurant unfeasibly expensive to run, infuriating his investor, family friend Uncle Jimmy (a.k.a. Cicero, played by Oliver Platt) and making his sister and business manager Sugar's (Abby Elliott) life difficult as she welcomed a new baby. It also heightened Carmy's perennial conflict with Mikey's best friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), whose charm eased his evolution from managing The Beef to running front of house for The Bear. Their fights in the kitchen threw dinner services into chaos. Said chaos forced Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), a talented and self-possessed young chef who once idolized Carmy, to consider leaving this restaurant she helped create to accept a job offer from a more stable competitor. But by the end of the season, no problems had been solved and few questions answered. Maybe this was a manifestation of the same streaming bloat that has also, recently, produced maddeningly incomplete seasons of hit shows like The Last of Us and Squid Game. To give The Bear the benefit of the doubt, which it had earned, was to interpret 10 episodes' worth of wheel-spinning as a stylistic choice underscoring the characters' own poor communication and fundamental stuckness. When the finale made the contents of a Chicago Tribune review its cliffhanger, it seemed as though movement was finally imminent. Unfortunately, Season 4—whose thematic throughline is Carmy and his family and colleagues mending broken relationships and making amends for the hurt they've caused each other—is just as inert. Carmy acknowledges as much in a premiere that finds him gloomily watching Groundhog Day on TV and complaining to pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) that he feels 'stuck in the same day.' The Trib headline reads: 'Bear Necessities Missing: The Bear Stumbles With Culinary Dissonance,' and the gist is that, while the food is interesting and ambitious, a lack of harmony behind the scenes makes the overall experience a crapshoot. Or, as Syd sums it up, 'The Trib ate here three different times at three different restaurants… They didn't like the chaos.' As usual, Carmy sees the situation through his own, depressive and self-absorbed, lens: 'I wasn't good enough, and I need to be better.' Whatever the core problem may be, the need for improvement is urgent. Spooked by the review, Jimmy and his numbers guy, The Computer (Brian Koppelman), come into the kitchen with a giant digital timer, counting down two months' worth of seconds. That's how long The Bear has to change its financial outlook or close. This challenge should've been enough to get the show cooking again. Weirdly, it isn't. Though the timer keeps ticking and graphs charting the restaurant's progress periodically flash across the screen, little of what actually happens has much to do with this race towards profitability. It's as though creator Christopher Storer has forgotten how to do the kind of thrilling service scenes that once made The Bear so addictive, painting plot beats and character development into the larger panorama of present-tense panic. Instead, in too many formless episodes, Season 4 favors quiet solo scenes (Syd perfects a dish amid dramatic lighting and a haunting St. Vincent track, in a set piece that looks lovely but has nothing new to say) and earnest two-handers. These one-on-one conversations sound remarkably similar to one another. Everyone is always expressing profound truths from the very bottom of their soul. And what they're conveying, more often than not, are truisms or self-help koans: 'People are not so different.' 'It's realizing the capacity to love that matters.' 'There is probably one really true thing about restaurants… You are never alone.' As awards pundits never fail to notice, The Bear resists categorization as a comedy. Now, it's not only seldom funny; it also takes itself way too seriously. That shift in tone, from early seasons that moved fluidly between humor and wonder and angst to the relentless solemnity of the past two, has been particularly frustrating with regard to our hero. It's not hard to believe Carmy's a culinary genius, nor would the show work if he wasn't one. What's growing tiresome is his depiction as the ultimate tragic hero, noble and beautiful but cursed by the tragic flaw of his perfectionism, and specifically of his need to compensate for a bad childhood by proving he's the best to ever tweezer microgreens onto a blanket of foam. The camera lingers for too long on his pained, Grecian-bust features. His every line is freighted with meaning. White does as great a job as is probably possible of making this overly aestheticized archetype into a believable human being. It's not his fault that Carmy has gotten so boring. For proof, look to Season 4's best episode, in which he isn't even a presence. Directed by Zola filmmaker Janicza Bravo (every other episode this season credits Storer as director or co-director), it follows Syd on a day off spent getting her hair braided at the home of a stylist pal, Chantel, played by Danielle Deadwyler. A pragmatic, emotionally intelligent contrast to Carmy, Syd is still agonizing over whether to leave The Bear or become one of its partners. When Chantel has to run to the beauty supply store for more hair, Syd entertains—and, of course, tenderly cooks a meal for—her 10-year-old daughter, TJ (Arion King), who happens to be navigating a painful transition of her own. The episode is refreshing, thanks in part to Bravo's lighter hand and in part to the respite it offers from Carmy's wallowing. Standout installments of previous seasons have also spotlighted secondary characters, from Season 2's Richie-focused 'Forks' to line cook Tina's (Liza Colón-Zayas) origin story in 'Napkins,' from Season 3. The Bear should be leaning more and more on this great supporting ensemble, whose characters are rich with potential storylines, for longevity. To Storer's credit, the new season does dial back the distracting celebrity-chef cameos and, with Deadwyler among the few exceptions, shiny A-list guest stars. (A wedding episode features many of the same characters we met in Season 2's divisive family Christmas blowout, 'Fishes,' to which this sometimes-wonderful but excessively long, 70-minute montage of confessions and reconciliations is trying a bit too hard to be a sequel.) Still: Carmy's brooding leaves little time to venture into the lives of, say, Tina or Marcus. Like its predecessor, this season ends with the tantalizing suggestion of big, overdue changes to come. If the twist that's teased in the promising finale really does happen, it will be The Bear's most substantial—and, I think, most inspired—reset to date. If not, a show that has now been in decline for half its run risks devolving into a mess as self-indulgent, morose, and, well, dissonant as its title character.
Daily Mail
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Guess who! MasterChef judge looks almost unrecognisable in throwback photo
He's the popular judge on the hit Network Ten reality show MasterChef Australia. Since joining the show, he has quickly become a fan favourite for the way he mentors the hopeful chefs. The famous foodie comes with quite the kitchen pedigree, having been awarded a formidable four Michelin stars. He's no slouch in front of the camera as well, having appeared in a raft of small-screen fare, including Chef Academy, Celebrity X Factor, Cooking With The Stars, Celebrity Hunted UK, Hell's Kitchen UK, and many more. One eagle-eyed MasterChef fan received quite the shock when they spotted the culinary king in a resurfaced clip from a 17-year-old show. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Can you guess who it is? That's right! It's none other than lauded French chef Jean-Christophe Novelli. Social media user Vivid_Percentage5560 took to Reddit this week to share a throwback photo of Jean-Christophe during an appearance as a judge on American Top Chef in 2008. 'Guess who was a judge on the American Top Chef season 5?' they asked, before revealing they only realised who it was upon hearing his distinctive French accent. 'Jean-Christophe Novelli!' they excitedly responded. 'I was re-watching old episodes of Top Chef and recognised his voice.' The photo showed a very serious-looking Jean-Christophe pictured when he was around 47 years old. He looked almost unrecognisable, sporting a much fuller face than the one that appears in the MasterChef kitchen. While his hairstyle has not changed much in the ensuing years, it appears Jean-Christophe has gone a couple of shades lighter. The post was met with a flurry of chatter from fans, with the likes of: 'No way!!!' Another made reference to Jean-Christophe's accent with: 'This find is fan-tas-tique!' A third added that they too had been keeping tabs on Jean-Christophe's earlier TV appearances. 'He was a mentor chef on some older season of Cooking with the Stars and that was the only reason why I watched it,' they offered. Jean-Christophe joined the cast of MasterChef in 2024, starring as a judge alongside Andy Allen, Poh Ling Yeow, and Sofia Levin. He quickly became a fan favourite, with many viewers taken by Jean-Christophe's mentorship and personality. Just weeks before last year's MasterChef finale, fans flocked to Reddit to expresss their dismay that Jean-Chrisophe was not given more screen time on his inaugural season. But one disgruntled fan noted: 'I personally love him, but I feel the contestants as well as the judges don't pay much attention to him. 'Kinda chuckle whenever he's talking out loud, laugh embarrassingly whenever he praises or bangs the table. 'Poh gets all the attention and is part of everything. Even when he's praising the contestants, they don't take him seriously.' The viewer went on to say Jean-Christophe is very 'sweet' and tries 'to be as helpful as possible, but nobody really cares'. Other users voiced their agreement, with many praising the restaurateur for his uplifting and positive personality on the Channel 10 cooking competition. 'He's totally our favourite judge. Total breath of fresh air,' one person said.
