March 08--Blame it on the deep dish.
"Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi said she gained 17 pounds during the filming of "Top Chef: Chicago" eight years ago, in part because she had to eat every deep-dish pizza appetizer for the show's first quickfire challenge.
"At the beginning of the season, there are always anywhere from 15 to 19 contestants and we had to do a deep dish pizza because how can you go to Chicago and not?" Lakshmi told People magazine and Entertainment Weekly.
Lakshmi, who released her memoir "Love, Loss, and What We Ate" on Tuesday, had to taste the pizza twice: Once out of the oven and again after delivery to see how the pie held up.
"They wanna win," Lakshmi said about the contestants. "They don't care about my waistline, so there's duck sausage and taleggio and oozing burrata and ground meat, bacon, anything they can shove in there to make it decadent and juicy!"
Girl and the Goat chef Stephanie Izard won "Top Chef: Chicago." The 13th season of "Top Chef," set in California, airs 8 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo.
