Top Chef Contestants Will Get a Second Life Online

The ninth iteration of Bravo’s Emmy Award-winning reality culinary competition Top Chef will make its debut Wednesday, November 2. A new Top Chef online companion series that offers contestants who have packed their knives and gone an opportunity to still claim the coveted title of Top Chef and its associated prize money will premiere shortly thereafter.

D.M. Levine at Adweek reports Top Chef: The Last Kitchen features an “alternate round of cook-offs” for all the Top Chef Season 9 wannabes who will hear this tune. But the show won’t be any kind of low-budget online spin-off. The competition in the loser’s bracket will be shot in the same locations by the same production teams and hosted by the same soul patch-sporting, Diet Coke-consuming, celebrity chef Tom Colicchio as its television counterpart.

As online viewers watch to see which eliminated contestant will battle back to earn a place at the final Judges Table on TV, those viewers will be incentivized to stay tuned by way of prizes for participating in polls and other interactive programming components. Levine also notes long standing Top Chef sponsor Toyota will be along for the ride on the web.

We’ve seen a number of companion web series to dramatic television programs that further extend the storylines and give hardcore fans an opportunity to delve deeper into fictional worlds. In regards to reality programming, YouTube annualy parnters with America’s Got Talent for a special episode bringing basement-born online video stars into the competition. But Top Chef: The Last Kitchen looks to be the most serious and integrated effort from a television network to incorporate a companion series of any kind into its programming. Because of that, and because I love me some Top Chef contestant, I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Bravo and The Last Kitchen have cookin’.