"Top Chef: Chicago" starts Wednesday

The Stew - Chicago Tribune Blog - Chicago, IL, USA - Bravo’s "Top Chef: Chicago" premieres 9 p.m. Wednesday with some seasoned chefs bungling classic dishes that they clearly have never learned to make--but should have.

"That always surprises me," said a still-flabbergasted head judge Tom Colicchio in an interview promoting the premiere. We won’t give away the details, but the elimination challenge involves the chefs re-creating classic dishes. "Back when I came up 25 years ago, you learned the classics; you were cooking in kitchens. But nowadays you don’t have to learn those dishes."

Still, Colicchio went on to say that with this cast of 16, including two Chicagoans, Valerie Bolon and Stephanie Izard, "as a whole the talent runs a lot deeper than it has in the past three seasons."

That's great news for fans of the reality cooking show, which was filmed in Chicago last fall. For more about Bolon and Izard and behind-the-scenes insight, see our story, "Chi-Town Challenge."

For Maureen Ryan's review of the first episode, see The Watcher.