The Bravo network just released the trailer for season 18 of Top Chef, which premieres April 1 and will feature Louisville chef Edward Lee, a former contestant, on a rotating panel of judges. In this piece, published in December, Chris Kenning talked to Lee about Top Chef, frozen pizza, belting out songs while shirtless in a karaoke bar and so much more, including the struggle to survive as a restauranteur during the pandemic. Lee said, “It’s hard for me to look at any kind of expansion when I’m literally in the middle of closing restaurants and I’m in the middle of trying to help other people not to close their restaurants. And I’m seeing some having their careers basically ruined. That’s been a psychological roller coaster.”
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A frank discussion about racism, police brutality, Breonna Taylor and where the city goes from here — with Jecorey Arthur, Charles Booker, Quintez Brown, Hannah Drake, Brianna Harlan, Cassia Herron and Ricky L. Jones.
The pandemic has affected every aspect of life in Louisville: every industry, every neighborhood, every family. So, from March through June, we interviewed folks from all walks of life about their experience of the “new normal” — respiratory therapists, hair stylists, epidemiologists, factory workers, teachers, recovering addicts, small business owners, politicians, survivors and the bereaved. The result is a four-month time capsule of life during COVID containing a wide range of perspectives, from the hospital chaplain enduring the unthinkable to the high school cafeteria manager keeping kids fed.
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Over the summer, Louisville saw nightly protests in response to the police killing of Breonna Taylor. Photographer Mickie Winters went downtown to capture indelible moments from the movement. She found anger, hope and tear gas.
You think it’s Pinkerton up there onstage, with his new Japanese bride, the lover he’ll soon forsake. But it’s not. That’s Robert Curran, the dancer, performing Madame Butterfly in November 2011, the last season of his career. You think he’s gazing at Cio-Cio San, the character, but he’s not; he’s gazing at his dance partner, Rachel Rawlins, a woman he has danced with many times in his 16 years with the Australian Ballet, 10 as a principal artist. Yes, of course, he knows the story, the betrayal coming up, poor Cio-Cio San’s fate. He will bring all of that to life — has trained, monastically, to do so. But right now, with this pas de deux, when the two characters are about to sleep together for the first time, he has the chance to push himself into that indeterminate thing that makes true art happen: risk. For that he’ll need emotion. Real emotion. Not just Pinkerton’s, but his own. So he’s thinking about Rawlins: What can he do to surprise Rawlins? How can he make Rawlins — not Cio-Cio San, the character, but Rawlins — feel something?
As his parents pulled into the driveway, Jack Harlow had a question from the backseat. He was 12. “Mom,” he said, “how do I become the best rapper in the world?” His mother had just read the book Outliers, which popularized the theory that the secret to greatness is 10,000 hours of practice. With Jack’s 18th birthday as a deadline, she did the math. For the next six years, her son would need to work on rapping for four or five hours every day.
“OK,” Jack said.
