Yet again I find myself surprised that a show has returned to the air.

I’ve been so busy with the rumors about the new season of Top Chef possibly being taped in Seattle, that the return of Top Chef‘s redheaded stepchild Top Chef: Masters never occurred to me. But apparently…we get a new season starting tonight. Bios for all the masterchefstestants is on Bravo’s website.

Looks like we’ll be getting heavy hitters like Patricia Yeo, Chris Cosentino, and Art Smith and my favorite food critic Ruth Reichl will be returning the Judges Panel, along with James Oseland and new judge, food writer Francis Lam.

When the show first started, it was a format departure from the regular TC. We didn’t start out with a field of master chefs and whittle them down. We had heats and those winners battled each other. It kept things interesting.

Even the second iteration kept itself apart from the regular TC, with a variation on season 1’s tiered competition.

But the most recent season change the format so that it exactly mirrored what we get when we watch Top Chef and that just wasn’t terribly interesting for me. Sure it’s great to see chefs at the top of their game compete against each other, but to really keep us riveted we need a different sort of competition.

Hopefully this new season will revert back to the non-typical format. Or at a minimum, let’s not have these professionals trying to chop a fish out of a block of ice, ok?

It’s the original outdoor freezer