Chefs

There are few things more satisfying in reality food TV than watching veteran chefs go head-to-head in nerve-wracking cooking challenges. The fifth season of Food Network's "The Next Iron Chef America" kicked off Sunday with the chairman's signature flair for drama and all things wacky, including grasshoppers on a sandy deserted island. The 10 competing chefs are fighting for redemption, all having previously competed on "The Next Iron Chef America" or a TV cooking competition. Here's the lineup: Alex Guarnaschelli (Season 4, chef of Butter, The Darby and judge on "Chopped")

There's a reason the contestants on "Top Chef" are given beer — or in the case of series spin-off "Top Chef Masters," wine or liquor — while they await their fate at Judges Table. After a long day of dreaming up and jamming out dishes for nitpicking judges, the chefs are driven to a top-secret location in downtown L.A. where "Top Chef Masters" is filmed, lined up and ordered to make like a statue while facing their critics so the cameras can get those dramatic, swooping shots of the staring showdown that kicks off final judgment.

High-energy Amy Finley gave a fast-paced cooking demonstration Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show . (She returns at 11 a.m. Sunday (today) for a second demo.) Finley, a classically trained cook and the author of "How to Eat a Small Country," prepared lapin a la moutarde , or rabbit with mustard, a traditional Burgundian dish. She's an advocate for getting people to eat more rabbit but admitted that it's tricky thinking of a "fluffy bunny and what you're having for dinner.

Six of Los Angeles' most prominent Jewish chefs are banding together to cook brunch for the first Project Chicken Soup awards ceremony Sunday at Temple Beth Am, 1039 S. La Cienega Blvd. The brunch is a tribute to Mollie Pier, co-founder of Project Chicken Soup. A longtime educator in the Los Angeles school system, Pier became an early supporter of Parents, Families and Friends of Gays and Lesbians after her son Nathaniel came out of the closet. He went on to become one of the first doctors treating people with AIDS , and after his death, Pier founded Project Chicken Soup , a volunteer organization that delivers free kosher meals to people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses.

John Sedlar of Playa is hosting a Baja Chef Series over three consecutive weeks, starting Sunday, Sept. 16, with Sabina Banderas, the owner of La Guerrerense, the celebrated seafood street stand. Other chefs include Benito Molina of Manzanilla restaurant and Guillermo "Oso" Campos Moreno of Tacos Kokopelli. Menus will be offered along with Sedlar's new rooftop-garden-inspired menu. Playa bar director Julian Cox will create collaborative cocktails. La Guerrerrense, Sunday, Sept.

Last year's great restaurant experiment gave us Fennel and the "shuttle chefs"-- four chefs who jet into Los Angeles--one at a time--from France every month or so. Last month, Roland Gibert and Maurice Peguet opened Tulipe, a restaurant where two head chefs work side-by-side. Do too many chefs spoil the fumet? "He's the meat man; I'm the fish guy," Peguet says, and then--he can't help himself--he bears his teeth in a grin. You have to understand that at this moment, barely two months after Tulipe grilled its first squab, Gibert and Peguet are two happy chefs.

PRIME CUT: Although it is making something of a comeback, chefs say, beef is still less-than-prime ticket in many of Orange County's top restaurants. . . . Cost has gone up 8% in a year, and health-minded patrons still favor poultry and seafood, says Todd Clore, above, Hotel Laguna's chef, who adds that lamb has become a popular good deal. "I like to use less-used cuts. . . . I'm featuring buffalo short ribs next week. Tastes like beef but less fat.

Get a taste of the Maya Empire  - flavored by a touch of California cuisine - at an international chef series underway in Tulum, Mexico .    In May the series, sponsored by Zamas Hotel and Que Fresco ! restaurant, will feature Chef Alicia Jenish of the Grand Café in San Francisco . Her May 4-8 sessions will focus on the café's brasserie style of cooking and incorporate touches of Mexican and Caribbean cuisine. Other chefs and mixologists will lead sessions throughout the rest of the year and into 2014.  "We're excited to have a talented roster of chefs and bartenders visiting us," said Susan Bholken, a co-owner of the hotel.

The dinner party is over. The season of the celebrity chef is coming to an end. It was a phenomenon of the '80s. Wolfgang Puck--along with Alice Waters and Paul Prudhomme--changed the way we ate. In return we gave them not only fortune, but more fame than any chef in America had ever dreamed of. Those who've already got it can keep their fame, but the next generation of chefs will have to settle for fortune. The era of adulation is over.

"Allo." The gravelly voice had an immutable French accent. "Jean-Louis here." That was the telephone greeting of America's first world-class French chef, when one measures those things by Michelin stars. The inspiration of many great chefs cooking today, Jean-Louis Palladin, who died Sunday, needed no last name. Like Julia or Cher. And truth be told, if Jean-Louis Palladin had been born a woman, he would have been some combination of those two.