The Morning After: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Spoilers for the season premiere of Top Chef coming up after the jump:

I don't know about you, but if I'm at a restaurant and the chef sends out a plate of apples drenched in human blood, I'm sending them back. This presentation was not a disqualifier on last night's two-elimination first round of the new Top Chef, which kicked off with an apple-peeling challenge using knives, an event that promised a sanguinary good time. As soon as Tom Colicchio announced the challenge, I knew it as well as Daniel Day-Lewis: There will be blood. 

Per usual, it looks like it will take a couple episodes for the characters to really emerge, so just a few random notes: 

* Long Island City is known for Middle Eastern food? News to me. I mainly know it for industrial zoning and the Fresh Direct warehouse. Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn might have been a more picturesque Middle Eastern food district, with Sahadi's emporium and the strips of halal butchers, but then I'm biased. (Expect lots more NYC neighborhood pedantry from me this season!)

* Loved how Radhika announced that the last thing she wanted was for the judges to assume that, just because she was South Asian, that she'd make a lot of Indian food, then for her first dish made—apple chutney. 

* So every year but one the winner of the first challenge has won Top Chef? I hadn't noticed, but thanks for pointing it out—now I don't need to watch the rest of the season. Way to draw the viewers back!