'Top Chef' Web Series 'Last Chance Kitchen' Returns

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By Brian Anthony Hernandez2013-10-24 17:48:42 UTC

Last Chance Kitchen, the companion web series for Bravo's cooking competition Top Chef, returned this week on the heels of winning the Emmy award for Multiplatform Storytelling.

The web series on BravoTV.com takes the TV show's eliminated contestants each week and pits them against each other for a chance to earn a spot in the main show's finale.

Last season's Last Chance Kitchen winner, Kristen Kish (pictured, above), re-entered the competition for the televised finale and claimed the title of top chef.

"There's often, every season, one chef who should have gone much further — and has the talent to win — but made a mistake or was on a losing team that made a mistake," Top Chef judge and Last Chance Kitchen host Tom Colicchio told Mashable. "Some of the chefs now are willing to take bigger risks because they know there's a second chance."

Last Chance Kitchen began its third season online Wednesday night (episode embedded below). Last season attracted 9.5 million video views and significant conversation online. This was in part due to the digital series' "Save a Chef" competition, in which viewers voted for their favorite eliminated Last Chance Kitchen contender. The top vote-getter snagged a spot in the web series' finale.

Fifty-two percent of Top Chef's TV audience reportedly engaged in the web series.

"Multiplatform storytelling turns our one-hour show into a seven-day-a-week experience," Lisa Hsia, EVP of digital media at Bravo, previously told Mashable.

Last Chance Kitchen airs Wednesday night at 11 p.m. ET. The first episode featured Top Chef's first five eliminated contestants. Subsequent episodes will feature the latest eliminated chef battling the previous week's Last Chance Kitchen winner.

Top Chef — which is being filmed in New Orleans, La., this time — is in its 11th season.

"The city itself has come a long way since Hurricane Katrina, but it still has a long way to go," Colicchio said. "For us to spend five and six weeks in New Orleans, we got to see it a little different than a tourist who goes down there for wild partying."

Colicchio discovered a not as well-known culinary part of the city while eating out in New Orleans: "Besides the creole and cajun and the influences from Africa and Native Americans, there also is a pretty large and vibrant Vietnamese culture there."

"I found that when I came home I was cooking rice dishes, which I found interesting because I don't cook a lot of rice at home and that's because of the dishes I saw down there," he added. "It kind of just creeps in."