If you've got any wild dreams of culinary stardom, spruce up that résumé and tighten up those recipes -- Top Chef is hosting a local casting call for its tenth season tomorrow. more ›

I did not want to miss out on what is arguably the District's hottest opening of the year. And I'm glad that I didn't: Mike Isabella's Graffiato is already firing on all cylinders. more ›

Graffiato, the new Penn Quarter restaurant from former Zaytinya chef and Top Chef contestant Mike Isabella, is set to open on Thursday, June 23. more ›

We love Carla Hall. (We're a sucker for the "hootie hoo," what can we say.) We also love the D.C. Central Kitchen. (We're also a sucker for charities that aren't afraid to stand up to bullies.) So it's a good day when the two join forces: according to the charity's blog, Hall has joined the Central Kitchen's board of directors. more ›

Top Chef All-Stars premieres at 10 p.m. tonight on Bravo. This season features top contestants from the show's previous seasons squaring off for a second chance at becoming a Top Chef. Luckily for D.C., we've got the culinary chops to have three hometown toques competing in the competition: Carla Hall, Mike Isabella and the darling of the DCist commentariat himself, Spike Mendelsohn. more ›

With the completion of Top Chef D.C. -- you can relive our coverage of the entire season here -- we're all still rubbing our eyes a bit from malaise. Last night, Bravo announced that they've decided to go back and revisit some of our favorite contestants with Top Chef All Stars. more ›

We finally have a new Top Chef. We're not going to lie and say it's been a great road. This season was...a struggle. At times, it felt like it would never end -- apparently we aren't the only ones who felt that way. There were viewing parties for the final episode at a few area spots including Eric Ripert's West End Bistro, The Oval Room (where contestant Tamesha Warren is the sous chef) and at Top Chef alum Spike Mendelsohn's restaurant Good Stuff Eatery. But they were sparsely attended. Not that this should be a surprise -- it's hard to drum up interest in a viewing party when there's no D.C. contestant on the show. more ›

So we've arrived at the final week of Top Chef polling. What a perfect denouement, what with yesterday's primaries and all -- though there's far less dancing going on in this race. more ›

Two more episodes of competition left until a Top Chef is anointed. This week, the cheftestants will be meeting in Singapore to go through the final stages of competition. more ›

Only four more episodes, including the reunion, to go! Top Chef may have broken The Amazing Race's streak by winning the Emmy for best reality show this year. But based on this season, we get the feeling The Amazing Race will go right back to winning the trophy next year. more ›

With the exception of Angelo, who woulda thought at the beginning of the Top Chef season that this group would be our top six? I certainly didn't. more ›

Restaurant Wars has a tradition of taking out top contenders for minor things or twists of fate. It was no different this week when one of our poll favorites, Kenny, was eliminated. But the tide had already begun to turn against Kenny -- Tiffany once again came out on top last week with 32 percent of the vote compared to his 21 percent. Angelo rounded out the top three with 19 percent of the vote. more ›

Now that we're halfway through this season of Top Chef, it's time to look back at our past polls to see how the cheftestants have fared. more ›

At Week 8, we're only at the midpoint of Washington's Top Chef season. It really feels like no season has ever dragged on this long. I'm almost ready to throw up my hands and apply a Real World D.C.-type treatment to the rest of this season. more ›

The local talent in our hometown Top Chef season may have flamed out all too soon. But local fans of the Bravo network's popular franchise won't have to wait too long to cheer on another Washington favorite: today, Bravo announced the names of the cheftestants for its premier season of Top Chef: Just Desserts and among the 12 is Heather Chittum of Georgetown's Hook and Tackle Box. more ›

I think last week's Ur Doin' It Wrong proves just how exhausting and tired this season of Top Chef has become. The DCist polls haven't shown much movement since the second week. We all know that Kenny, Angelo and Kelly are on top with 45, 20 and 17 percent of the vote, respectively. Our polls did not anticipate the previous week's dark-horse winner Kevin, who only received .6 percent of the vote. And we're all still waiting for Stephen to be eliminated -- with his complete lack of votes -- he might be worth keeping around for his drunken penguin impressions. more ›

Just like our interview with Timothy Dean last week, this interview has spoilers -- but only if you're behind on your TiVo-ing. If you're trying to maintain a spoiler-free atmosphere, feel free to check out our June interview with Warren, which was conducted before the season kicked off. more ›

Following this week's theme of crazy things caught on video, this video of a drunken Stephen telling a dirty joke about a penguin is definitely good for a laugh. But this past week, Stephen did manage to accumulate a few votes in our poll. He's already moving on up; I'd probably give him a vote based on this video alone. more ›

We caught up this week with local Top Cheftestant Timothy Dean, who dished about on his time on the show, why he wanted to break his TV and how his simple style of cooking fit into the Top Chef D.C. season. Dean also discussed currently underway plans to open shop in the former Bluepoint/John Harvard's space at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW -- though he steered clear of the details of his National Harbor plans, where he is suing developers. more ›

During last week's Top Chef, two contestants were eliminated. Both Arnold and Lynne managed to garner votes in last week's poll, while Stephen is again voteless. It's almost not worth recounting last week's poll results, as Kenny and Angelo once again dominated the field, grabbing 70 percent of the total votes combined. However, we're seeing potty-mouth Alex begin to rise in the poll with 9 percent, wrenching a very distant third place from Kelly. more ›

Last night's episode of Top Chef may as well have been called "Couples' Retreat": everything seemed to be about twos. We got a quickfire where two lucky chefs snagged $10,000 each and an elimination challenge where teams won and lost in twos. And if we've learned anything from seasons of watching Top Chef, it's that team-based challenges are always a guarantee for drama. more ›

Clear favorites have emerged! Over the last three weeks, Top Chef contestants Kenny Gilbert and Angelo Sosa have held top spots in our poll. The lone exception was the first week, when hometown favorite Tamesha Warren understandably took top honors. This week, Kenny garnered nearly 50 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Angelo only claimed a little over 20 percent, despite his success in challenges -- probably attributable to the fact that he comes off like a jerk. These two leave everyone else in the dust. more ›

Tim Carman gets the scoop that former Top Chef contestant Mike Isabella will be departing from the head chef position at Zaytinya to open his own place. Isabella has been the head chef at Zaytinya since March 2007, and will not depart until August 7. Carman notes that Isabella's new restaurant will be located in Penn Quarter. The new venture -- which will reportedly focus on Venetian small plates, called cicchetti -- sounds like a fairly natural transition; we'll be interested to see what comes of it. more ›

If Top Chef's Week 2 challenge winners demonstrated anything, it's that the first few weeks of the competition are totally up for grabs. We saw the end of Angelo Sosa's winning streak, as 82 percent of our poll respondents accurately predicted. Pride always comes before a fall, but not before he was the co-winner of the Quickfire challenge with fellow cheftestant Tracey Bloom. Tracey received no votes in last week's poll, so one has to wonder if she was just riding on Angelo's coat tails or is a legitimate challenger. more ›

Former Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn's New York-style pizza joint has been a long time coming. But now we know that We, the Pizza is set to open next door to Good Stuff Eatery on July 12. The pizzeria will feature regional ingredients like creamed spinach, pancetta and shaved truffles as well as the usual standards like pepperoni and mozzarella. more ›

For this season's Top Chef DCist will be bringing you our "woulda, coulda, shoulda" take on how the cheftestants are faring. Every week we will highlight one individual who was doin' it wrong. more ›

Last Wednesday, Bravo aired the first episode of Top Chef D.C. And before the show DCist readers responded in the wonk tradition of polls. Given how little information was available, DCist readers did really well. more ›

Tonight's the night that many local foodies have been anticipating: the premiere of the D.C. season of Top Chef at 9 p.m. on Bravo. more ›

The wait for D.C.'s season of Top Chef, the Bravo network's popular chef competition, is nearly over. Season 7 premiers this Wednesday at 9 p.m. Along with another chance to see how our city looks through the eyes of a reality television camera, local fans get two local chefs to cheer for during the competition. Tamesha Warren, 24, is a District resident and the sous chef at downtown power spot The Oval Room. Timothy Dean, 39, is a native Washingtonian, was raised in Prince George's County, and currently owns and runs a restaurant in Baltimore. more ›

Where: The Gibson more ›