Padma Lakshmi

This morning, Top Chef host-judges Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio treated the food press to a conference call to discuss the upcoming fifth season of the show, which was mostly filmed in Brooklyn. Besides learning that guest judges will include Eric Ripert, Dave Grohl, Martha Stewart, Lidia Bastianich, Wylie Dufresne, and Marcus Samuelsson, we found out that Ms. Lakshmi usually "gains about 10 to 15 pounds over the course of [filming] … I always go up one dress size, without fail." Mr. Colicchio was also adamant that people know his, uh, collection of seven restaurants is not "a chain." 

Also, did you know Mr.  read more »

In an age where Damien Hirst errata have joined gold and United States government bonds in the shrinking pantheon of safe investments, can contemporary art still be dangerous?

More to the point, can contemporary art be dangerous when it's held in something of a polyurethane uterus, a haute-culture billboard designed by deconstructivist goddess Zaha Hadid, deposited on Rumsey Playfield in Central Park (after stints in Hong Kong and Tokyo), and paid for by Chanel—in these hard times is Lagerfeld really the Teutonic Karl we need?—whose iconic quilted handbag the melting plastic womb is said, implausibly, to resemble?

In a word, yes, if the traumas suffered by the Daily Transom at last night's opening party for the so-called CHANEL Contemporary Art Container—styled "Mobile Art"—are any indication.  read more »

Thursday night, on the eve of Fashion Week, a noir-ish crowd including Kelly Osborne, nightlife-loving model Agyness Deyn, designer Henry Holland, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and the ubiquitous Misshapes DJs wandered through Christie's galleries at a preview party for the auction house's fall sales of Postwar and Contemporary Art, Impressionist and Modern Art, and Resurrection: Avant-Garde Fashion. The latter was present in abundance, on mannequins dressed in vintage Versace and pale, generously eyelinered attendees who looked like they'd skipped lunch ... for a month.

Speaking of! Will the fashion industry's recent efforts to police the size of its models result in meatier mannequins this Fashion Week?

"I was hoping that it would be curvier models on the runway," said Mary Alice Stephenson, celebrity stylist and host of fashion's greatest reality show to date, America's Most Smartest Model.  read more »

Heidi Montag reportedly bailed on the White House Correspondents gala when MSNBC wouldn't adhere to the demands of her manager and boyfriend Spencer Pratt for first class tickets for the pair, even though only Ms. Montag was invited. [P6]

Padma Lakshmi is apparently cozying up with IMG owner Teddy Forstmann since her divorce from Salman Rushdie. [P6]  read more »

The Tribeca Film Festival kicks off its seventh year tonight at the Zeigfeld Theater with the big sparkly premiere of Baby Mama. The movie is about a single and successful businesswoman (Tina Fey) who hires a working-class woman (Amy Poehler) to be her surrogate. Can you believe we’ve gotten this far along in life without a wacky surrogate movie?  read more »

A basic tenet of East Village celebrity physics dictates that whenever a comely actress moves out of the neighborhood, another must instantly come to take her place.  read more »

On Monday, Nov. 19, Padma Lakshmi, the former model and comely host of Bravo’s reality series Top Chef, read from her latest cookbook, Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet (Weinstein Books, $34.95), at the Strand Bookstore near Union Square.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the title of Ms. Lakshmi’s book, along with her first, Easy Exotic, is a nod to her on-air personality. But one would be wrong.  read more »