Verona-based chef Floyd Cardoz will be one of the contestants for the third season of Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters“. Cardoz was the executive chef of Tabla, an Indian-influence restaurant in Manhattan, for 12 years before it closed this past December. He will soon be getting a new assignment from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. On the show, Cardoz will be going up against 11 other chefs, including Traci Des Jardins, the chef and co-owner of Jardinière in San Francisco and Mary Sue Milliken, who now owns the Border Grill Restaurants on the West Coast but is perhaps best know for the Mexican cooking she pioneered in “Too Hot Tamales”.
In “Top Chef Masters”, the chefs are eliminated through a series of challenges, which will be judged this season by former New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl, James Oseland and several celebrity judges, including Christina Hendricks, who played the role of Joan Holloway on “Mad Men”. The winning chef gets $100,000 to donate to the charity of his or her choice. Cardoz will be playing for the Young Scientist Cancer Research Fund.
The third season of “Top Chef Masters” will debut on Wednesday, April 6 at the ungodly hour of 11 p.m. On April 13, the show goes to its regular time slot, 10 p.m.
