BostonTV: Enter the Masterful New Cheftestants

• We love thee with a passion for staying relevant and hip to the food industry, even when Bravo’s other programming seems to be going down in flames.
• We love thee for Restaurant Wars. And thine finales. And thine gin cocktail and beer pairings. And thine Quickfires.
• We love thee for tiding us over this summer with Top Chef Masters.

Speaking of, guess which Top Chef spinoff premieres tonight? Correct! Top Chef Masters takes the spot-on Quickfire-and-elimination-challenge formula and adds a dash of famous chefs to keep things interesting. Our nerdy little foodie hearts sing at the thought of Elizabeth Falkner, Hubert Keller, and Wylie Dufresne (among many others) making mayonnaise from scratch and amuse-bouches out of vending machine food.

The new Padma is Kelly Choi, former Iron Chef judge and retired model. If that doesn’t qualify one to host Top Chef Masters, we don’t know what does. The new Gail is Gael Greene, an aptly named food critic; Saveur Editor-in-Chief James Oseland joins Greene at the table. The new (and hopefully improved) Toby Young is fellow Brit Jay Rayner.

Among the cheftestants is Boston’s adopted son, Michael Schlow, of Radius and Via Matta restaurants. Named one of the 50 “Best American Restaurants” by Gourmet and among the “Top 50 Most Exciting Restaurants in the World” by Conde Nast Traveler, Radius’s modern French cuisine proves Schlow will be one to look out for. Watch your bacon gelée’s back, Wylie! We’re just guessing that’s what he’d make.

Watch Top Chef Masters at 10 PM on Bravo.