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Top Chef: Season 1
  • Network: Bravo
  • Series Premiere Date: Mar 8, 2006
  • Season #: 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9
Top Chef Image
Metascore
64 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 5 Critics What's this?

User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 51 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
Rate this:
  • Starring: Katie Lee Joel, Gail Simmons, Tom Colicchio
  • Summary: This ten-episode reality competition set in San Francisco pits a dozen aspiring chefs against each other for a $100,000 cash prize.
  • Genre(s): Game Shows, Reality

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 5
  3. Negative: 0 out of 5
  1. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Virginia Heffernan
    80
    Like Bravo's fashion winner "Project Runway," the channel's promising "Top Chef" flaunts terms of art and insiderism to give it authority.
  2. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Paul Brownfield
    70
    "Top Chef" seems like a no-brainer, an extension both of the interactivity of TV cooking and the art-and-craft side of reality shows, in which people are actually making things as opposed to just asses of themselves.
  3. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Marilyn Moss
    60
    A cooking match that has been seen so many times before in one form or another.

See all 5 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 42
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 42
  3. Negative: 13 out of 42
  1. MariaO.
    10
    when will season 3 start cooking. you keep repeating just 2 meals one of them is the quick fire.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. ShamiaH
    5
    I agree that this is no Project Runway! While watching Top Chef I noticed the Tim Gunn character is named Tom...Tom is no Tim! He was pompusin the first episode and hardly guides the chefs....Also I saw in the commercials a montage with Heidi....all I could think of was ahhhh I REALLY miss project runway!… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. JoeAverage
    3
    Let's start off with the line test. I have never scene a kitchen so clean they must have remodeled for the show. Finger in the sauce? Very, very common, we chefs and cooks are always washing our hands but sometimes we short cut and forget to use a spoon for tasting. Did the chef throw out the sauce? A very legitimate question, and then attacking the person asking the question was a move worthy of Karl Rove. It just goes to show that the sauce was not thrown out. Then letting Ken the finger in the sauce guy go instead of Ms. Missed cooked vegetables and the Model that over cooks her chicken is just wrong. Chefs are crazy, and well a**holes this show does well to show that, but this show is turning out to be amateur hour and only Ken and a few others could actually handle being sandbagged on a real kitchen line.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

See all 42 User Reviews

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