Ready for your Close-Up?

Local chefs, are you ready to become a TV star? Top Chef has issued a casting call for Top Chef Season 7, including October 25 in Miami at the Viceroy Hotel. Pack up your knives and go! Or, actually, don't bother packing your knives, they say you won't need them for the casting call. But do bring your completed application and your 5-minute video. You can see the complete application here.

Be ready to disclose "your most embarrassing moment," but make sure it's not too embarrassing. The application also asks if you have ever done or been involved in anything that would cause the producer or network "any embarrassment or monetary loss."

Mai Tardi Opening in Former Brosia Spot

The good folks at Thrillist bring news that "Mai Tardi," a new restaurant from the Graspa Group (the folks who run Spris, Tiramesu, the Lincoln Road Segafredo, and Van Dyke Cafe), will be opening Wednesday in the Design District location formerly held down by Brosia.

Thrillist has a link to the menu, which appears to be more ambitious than any of their other ventures to date and mixes Italian and tropical motifs (Flor-Italian?) along with a fulsome list of pizzas from a new wood-burning oven.

Rotten Apple?

A few months ago, I gave Apple Restaurant & Kore Lounge, the South Beach project of Los Angeles-based Chef Bryan Ogden (yes, son of Bradley) some grief for having delayed its opening "on account of weather." Maybe "weather" is some LA-lingo euphemism for "ownership dispute," because the next week, New Times reported that one of the investors had sued South Beach Restaurant Authority, the operator of Apple, and the other partners, claiming they took nearly $1 million from him under false pretenses.

As recently as this past Monday, the lawyers had reported to the court that they had met several times in an effort to amicably resolve the dispute, and were close to completing a settlement to resolve the entire matter. So close, yet so far away? On Friday, South Beach Restaurant Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.


All perhaps reinforcing the adage that the way to make a small fortune in the restaurant business is to start with a large one.