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Top Chef: Las Vegas, meet the contestants VIDEOS

By April MacIntyre Jul 8, 2009, 16:28 GMT

Top Chef season 6 "Top Chef: Las Vegas" premieres Wednesday, August 26th @10/9c on Bravo. Padma Lakshmi - The sixth season of the No. 1 food show on cable, Bravo's Emmy and James Beard Award-winning series returns with

Padma Lakshmi - The sixth season of the No. 1 food show on cable, Bravo's Emmy and James Beard Award-winning series returns with "Top Chef: Las Vegas," premiering Wednesday, August 26 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. © Sylvain Gaboury / PR PhotosOnce the bastion of crusty, scrambled egg buffets, Las Vegas is now considered a great culinary destination. This season in Vegas captures Sin City's high stakes and high rollers in addition to the top names in food, movies and entertainment including Wolfgang Puck, Todd English, Natalie Portman, Daniel Boulud, Penn & Teller, Hubert Keller, Laurent Tourondel, Tim Love, Michelle Bernstein, Tyler Florence, Charlie Palmer, Paul Bartolotta, Nigella Lawson and Jerome Bocuse will be featured this season on "Top Chef: Las Vegas."The sixth season of the No. 1 food show on cable, Bravo's Emmy and James Beard Award-winning series returns with "Top Chef: Las Vegas," premiering Wednesday, August 26 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The 17 new chef'testants even has a set of brothers competing against each other. Culinary siren Padma Lakshmi presides over the judge's table alongside head judge Tom Colicchio, renowned culinary figure and chef/owner Craft Restaurants, and judges Gail Simmons, of Food & Wine magazine and Toby Young, food critic and best-selling author of the book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

"Las Vegas has become a culinary destination ¡V some of the world's best chefs and restaurants are here ¡V so it's only fitting that our newest season was the best yet," said Colicchio. "You'll be surprised by the quality of chef'testants we discovered this season. They really raised the bar."The Premise:The 17 "Top Chef: Las Vegas" chef'testants will be whittled down week by week as they compete to outshine their competition. The winning chef will receive $100,000 furnished by the makers of the Glad family of products, $100,000 of merchandise provided by Macy's, a feature in Food & Wine magazine, a showcase at the Annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen and will earn the title of "Top Chef." The M Resort Spa & Casino served as the production location for "Top Chef: Las Vegas." Here's the new meat for the season:Ash Fulk, 29 Hometown: Pleasant Hill, Calif.; Resides in New York City
Ashley Merriman, 32 Center Sandwich, N.H.; Resides in Seattle, Wash.
Bryan Voltaggio, 33 Hometown: Frederick, Md.; Resides in Urbana, Md.
Eli Kirshtein, 25 Hometown/Resides in: Atlanta, Ga.
Eve Aronoff, 40 Hometown/Resides in: Ann Arbor, Mich.
Hector Santiago, 41 Hometown: San Juan, Puerto Rico; Resides in Atlanta, Ga.
Jennifer Carroll, 33 Hometown/Resides in: Philadelphia, Pa.
Jennifer Zavala, 31 Hometown: Cromwell, Conn.; Resides in Philadelphia, Pa. Jesse Sandlin, 30 Hometown/Resides in: Baltimore, Md.
Kevin Gillespie, 26 Hometown/Resides in: Atlanta, Ga.
Laurine Wickett, 38 Hometown: Rochester, N.Y.; Resides in San Francisco, Calif.
Mattin Noblia, 29 Hometown: Biarritz, France; Resides in San Francisco, Calif.
Michael Isabella, 34 Hometown: Little Ferry, N.J.; Resides in Washington, D.C.
Michael Voltaggio, 30 Hometown: Frederick, Md.; Resides in Los Angeles, Calif.
Preeti Mistry, 33 Hometown/Resides in: San Francisco, Calif.
Robin Leventhal, 43 Hometown: Sun Valley, Idaho; Resides in Seattle, Wash.
Ron Duprat, 40 Hometown: Mare Rouge, Haiti; Resides in Hollywood, Fla. and Naples, Fla.Bravo's "Top Chef" offers a fascinating window into the competitive, pressure-filled environment of world-class cookery and combines skill sets for customer service, management and teamwork abilities. The competing chefs live and breathe the high-pressure lifestyle that comes with being a master chef and each week someone is asked to "pack up their knives" and go home. Monsters and Critics will be posting photos of the cast -- stay tuned!