The best thing about watching Top Chef in the past couple seasons?

The best thing about watching Top Chef in the past couple seasons? Watching the chef-testants go all cuckoo-bananas after being locked up together in that house for a few weeks. There was Jennifer Carroll’s slow-rolling meltdown from last season, the Hosea-and-Leah debacle from the season before, pretty much everything that Spike Mendelsohn ever did…And now, the geniuses over at Bravo have decided to once again take the crazy on the road by rolling out the giant orange semi and booking a series of 21 dates scattered all across the U.S. This year, in addition to sit-down service from the chef-testants, Bravo is promising that “at every tour stop, not only will you get to see the chefs in person (and see what they’re REALLY like!), and sample their food, but you’ll also be able to play fun Top Chef games, win prizes, get chef’testant autographs, and take your photo at the Judges Table!”Well, hell… With that many exclamation points it must be fun.Right?Still, the big news for fans in this neck of the woods is that, for the first time ever, the Top Chef roadshow is going to be coming to the Pacific Northwest.Yup, you read that right. Checking in on the Bravo/Top Chef website, I see that both Seattle and Portland are on the schedule this year. That’s the good news.The bad news? No one is yet saying precisely when the tour will be rolling through town, or who might be riding along in the truck, ready to cook up some dinner, sign a few autographs and cling desperately to minute 13 of their allotted 15 minutes of fame. Most of the really big names (Spike, Jennifer, Richard Blaise, Hosea Rosenberg, Hung Huynh from season three) are busy doing their own things (Jennifer is back in the galley at Le Bernardin, Spike has his burger restaurant to attend to, Hosea is consulting and, apparently, traveling all over the damn country…), so they’re probably not going to be jumping on the tour. But if you’ve got a particular favorite among the also-rans, keep an eye on this here blog because I’ll be updating with names, dates and times just as soon as Bravo sees fit to release them.