Top Chef

- Season 7

(2010)

The 17 new chef'testants team up for their first elimination challenge in which they must create a dish that represents their own constituency, where they are from and what they represent. The chefs serve their dishes at the famous National Cherry Blossom festival in Washington D.C.

The chef'testants support First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to fight childhood obesity. The chefs must take over the cafeteria at the local middle school and create healthy, kid-friendly meals spending only $2.68 per child, which is the reimbursement rate schools receive for each child who is eligible for free lunch through the National School Lunch Program.

For the quickfire, the chefs must make a pie from scratch. For the elimination, the chefs prepare a classic picnic feast for Capitol Hill interns at Mount Vernon, the home of the first U.S. president, George Washington. While the chefs grill up some tasty dishes, the interns spread out their blankets and play croquet on the lawn.

For the quickfire challenge, the chefs must create baby food for Padma's newborn. For the elimination, the chefs are tested on their level of hospitality service. Washington Hilton enlists the chefs to create a dish that fits their clients' needs, clients who demand round the clock accessibility to good food that is healthy, affordable and sophisticated. The chefs must create a breakfast, lunch and dinner dish for a select focus group. In order to execute three services, chefs are paired into 7 teams of 2. The team with the best service will be awarded with a Hilton ...

The chef'testants get crabby this week when the quickfire requires them to cook with mounds of D.C.'s most famous ingredient, the blue crab. For the elimination challenge, they go to a Virginian farm to cook with fresh ingredients.

The chefs battle it out in a culinary version of the Cold War. The chef'testants are divided into two groups and each team must create one cold entrée.

The chef'testants attempt to create culinary delights that can be speared with a toothpick and served at a Congressional party for the quickfire challenge. For elimination, they must prepare a power lunch at the city's elite Palm restaurant.

The chefs must cook exotic Ethiopian cuisine for the quickfire, and for the elimination are tasked with creating a dish based on one of the foreign embassies in D.C. Chefs, ambassadors and dignitaries representing each country join in the judging.

The chefs are blindfolded in a classic cooking relay race for the elimination. Then it's Restaurant Wars time! The chefs are divided into two teams: donkeys versus elephants. The diners will taste each menu and "vote" for the team they want to win.

For the quickfire, the chefs must guess the ingredients inside a mystery box. For the elimination, the chefs must transform a well-known dish into something entirely new, cooking for none other than CIA Director Leon Panetta, who knows a thing or two about taking on a new identity. The chefs serve CIA Director Panetta and his closest allies in his private dining room inside the agency's closely guarded headquarters.

The six remaining chefs take over two concession stands at Nationals Park in D.C., creating game snacks for the die-hard fans of the Washington Nationals major league baseball team. But ballparks aren't just serving hot dogs and peanuts any more, adding a variety of tasty and higher-end creations to the menu.

The competition blasts off this week as an astronaut orbiting Earth blinks onto a large screen, instructing the chefs on this week's elimination challenge -- to come up with space food creations that do not taste like moon rocks. The winner will have their dish served in space.

The finalists compete in Singapore.

The final three compete and a Top Chef is chosen.

The drama is served piping hot on Bravo's "Top Chef: D.C. Reunion" as "Watch What Happens" host Andy Cohen chats up season seven's chef'testants along with host Padma Lakshmi, head judge Tom Colicchio and judges Gail Simmons and Eric Ripert. The chef'testants will answer viewers' questions and dish on season seven's good, bad and overcooked.