Ox Notes: June 11, 2008

The Top Chef: Chicago finale airs tonight at 10 ET on Bravo. I'm rooting for Stephanie to win, and so is the rest of Chicago. She recently did an interview with the Chicago Tribune, and she will be video chatting with fans of the show at the newspaper's website on Thursday at 1 p.m. CT. You can submit questions for the chef here.

Stephanie's fellow Top Chef: Chicago contestant, Antonia, spoke with People about getting cut just shy of the finale.

The hosts of Top Chef are getting nearly as much press as the contestants. Salon has an interview with Tom Colicchio, and the Los Angeles Times interviewed Padma Lakshmi.

Frequent Top Chef guest judge Ted Allen will host Food Detectives on the Food Network. The new show -- which sounds like a culinary version of Mythbusters -- premieres on July 29 at 9 p.m. ET.

Foodies out there might be interested in this MSNBC article about up-and-coming Chicago chef Grant Achatz and his battle with tongue cancer.

Also on the tube tonight, the Top Twenty dancers of So You Think You Can Dance 4 take the stage. OK! Magazine interviewed judge/producer Nigel Lythgoe, who says the breakers are the dancers to watch this season. Leave a comment below if you'd like me to open up the MOIB Chat Room during tonight's show.

It's a slow day for news about that other dance show, Dancing with the Stars. Mario Lopez was recently seen driving the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile, and Marissa Jaret Winokur still isn't ready for the birth of her first child.

MSN had a neat article about TV's Hall of Shame -- shows that aired two episodes or less before getting canned. I wonder if The Mole will be added to that list; it's second episode lost 16% of its viewers, giving it an audience of 3.97 million.