Top Chef starts again tonight! I’m such a big fan of Bravo because they constantly give me my TV fill—Top Chef: Just Desserts finished last week, and now they’ve given me Top Chef Season Nine to quench my competitive cooking show thirst. Thanks, Bravo, I’m really sorry that Lifetime took Project Runway from you.

This season promises to be like all the last eight seasons, but really, isn’t that what you want? Padma Lakshmi is back to eat food seductively, look pretty and occasionally make banal comments in her lyrical, measured voice. Culinary superstar (how many restaurants does this man have?) Tom Colicchio and his cuddly bear body and face, and ubiquitous television judge, Gail Simmons, are also returning. A new and interesting addition to the panel of judges this season is Emeril Lagasse, the first celebrity chef that I ever knew, who will perhaps add some ba-da-bing flavor to the panel. I can’t really imagine him being too harsh to a contestant, but we’ll see. Another permanent new judge is southern food chef and Top Chef Masters alum, Hugh Acheson. I don’t remember him at all.

The premise of this season seems a little different from the last, however. The series starts with a huge number of chefs—twenty-nine—and the competition moves all over Texas, rather than just staying in a single location. The competition will move from Austin to Dallas to San Antonio, and the changing kitchen locale promises to be an interesting challenge in itself. The competition promises to eliminate thirteen chefs immediately, so I’ll be excited to see how they drop so many gulliotines quite so quickly.

There are too many cheftestants right now to even begin to predict the strongest competitors. I think it would be interesting to know how these types of shows are cast. It’s easy enough to see how shows like Work of Art or Project Runway can show their wares in a casting video, but how do you know if video food is tasty?

But it’s not too hard to tell who is an eccentric personality from the posted casting videos. Los Angeles chef Laurent Quenioux likes to eat canned tuna in oil with tomatoes and tarragon when he cooks for himself at home. Sarah Grueneberg dropped out of high school. Andrew Curren is from Texas, so he’s shown drinking beer, fishing and grilling out on his barbeque in his casting video. Makes for good TV!

Are you going to be watching this season of Top Chef?