Singapore, 23 June 2011 – With Top Chef bringing home an Emmy in the reality competition category last season, Season 7 has definitely upped the ante with its very own concoction of wickedly juicy drama and mouth-watering cuisine. This season brings the culinary art to America’s seat of power - Washington D.C. - and for the first time, brings the cast to Asia! With 17 new cheftestants pushed out of their comfort zones and literally out of this world, challenges range from the exotic Asian cuisine, a blindfolded cooking relay race to serving up dishes which would whet the appetite of political dignitaries and… astronauts! Who will sizzle their way through and who will pack up their knives and go home?

Cookbook author and actress Padma Lakshmi returns to host the reality series, along with head judge Tom Colicchio (the James Beard Award-winner and chef/owner of Craft Restaurants) and judge Gail Simmons (Food & Wine magazine). Award-winning chef and owner of a three Michelin-starred restaurant (Le Bernardin in New York City, ranked 15th among the best restaurants in the world), Eric Ripert, joins the judging panel as a regular guest judge.

From preparing power lunches for a Congressional Party to coming up with space food creations that do not taste like moon rocks (the winning dish gets served in space!), little fazes the cheftestants, who hail from the crème de la crème of the industry. What makes this season even more special is the finale episode shot on the sunny shores of Singapore, where local food celebrity KF Seetoh will be judging their attempts to create Singapore street food with a wok!

As in previous seasons, each episode of Top Chef serves two challenges. The first is a quick fire test of their basic abilities and the second is a more involved elimination challenge designed to test the versatility and creativity of the chefs. Every chef will have to take on unique culinary trials, sometimes working with unusual and exotic foods or even catering for a range of clients - no small feat if your guest list includes Assistant White House chef Sam Kass, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin!

The winning chef walks away with a cash prize of USD125,000, a feature in Food & Wine magazine, a showcase at the Annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen and most importantly, the title of “Top Chef”, the entry ticket to gastronomic stardom. With so much at stake, the rivalry no doubt gets heated up among the competition. As aptly put by the Los Angeles Times, Top Chef ‘fully engages Washington's true spirit: partisan backstabbing’, never more apparent than in episode ‘Cold War’. In the episode, the remaining chefs get split into two teams and are given the power to nominate one member from the opposing team for elimination. Throw in another case of missing pea puree and a cheftestant falling so ill he could not get out of bed just before an elimination challenge, and you get a season chockfull of what makes a reality series so entertaining!

With such wickedly juicy drama, it is no surprise that Top Chef led its timeslot among women and adults aged 18-54 when the season aired in the US. Tune in to Sony Entertainment Television this July and you will find that good food and good drama certainly go hand in hand!

TOP CHEF: D.C. Premieres 4 July, 2011, Every Monday & Tuesday @ 9pm
First & Exclusively on Sony Entertainment Television (SET)