Wylie Dufresne

"Top Chef Masters," the spin-off series of the Emmy and James Beard Award-winning No. 1 food show on cable, "Top Chef," flips the judges’ table to find out who can handle the heat. "Top Chef Masters" will pit 24 world-renowned chefs against each other, four in each of episode, to win $100,000 for the charity of their choice. Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys), Christopher Lee (Aureole), Michael Schlow (Radius Restaurant), and Tim Love (The Lonesome Dove Western Bistro) are the first to draw knives and kick off a whole new level of culinary competition.

Albert presses Councilman Ron Singleton to reopen housing projects; Davis enlists some top local musicians to cut a campaign CD; a Japanese jazz fan does a good turn for Antoine; Janette cooks for four celebrity chefs; Annie fails to embrace Sonny's houseguest; the city celebrates the return of displaced residents with a second-line parade.

Operating on an extremely tight budget, the chefs must create the perfect amuse bouche using only what they can find in a vending machine. Master Wylie Dufresne (wd~50), Suzanne Tracht (Jar), Graham Elliot Bowles (Graham Elliot Restaurant), and Elizabeth Falkner (Orson) find themselves “lost” as they are challenged to make a meal inspired by the hit TV show, using ingredients such as fish, wild boar, fresh fruits, and other island specialties.

Season Three premiere. Antoine Batiste flirts with martyrdom; Janette Desautel encounters her old nemesis, Enrico Brulard, and a new suitor; Delmond and Albert Lambreaux debut their Indian-jazz album; Toni Bernette meets L.P. Everett, a new ally in her investigation of post-Katrina killings; LaDonna Batiste-Williams finds living with in-laws is its own kind of hell; Sonny is in an in-law hell of his own, and he and Linh aren't even married; Nelson Hidalgo is barking up new money trees.

Week three brings the chefs to the cramped kitchen of Tom Bergin’s Tavern on Fairfax, the oldest Irish establishment in LA, where they must re-invent traditional pub dishes ranging from bangers and mash to fish ‘n’ chips. Graham Elliot Bowles (Graham Elliot Restaurant), Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto), Ludo Lefebvre (Ludo Bites), Mark Peel (Campanile), Rick Moonen (Rick Moonen’s RM Seafood at Mandalay Bay) and Wylie Dufresne (wd~50) go head- to- head in a rousing attempt to satisfy the venue's clientele with old-school tastes and skeptical attitudes towards ‘modern’ pub food.