Top Chef Las Vegas: Kevin Gillespie And His Big Beard, Tattoos & Piercings

I've been intending to comment on something since the start of the new season of Top Chef, but I kept forgetting about it. Til now.

Chef Kevin Gillespie and his absurdly big beard. I do not understand why such a thing is not a big cooking no-no. Are hairnets not standard issue in most kitchens? But a big, nasty looking beard is okay?

Reading the various TV forums, like Survivor Sucks, I have seen I am not alone in my aversion to this beard.

After about a month of not shaving the mess on my face starts driving me nuts. I can not imagine have as much shrubbery as Kevin has and not being bugged by it in a hot kitchen.

It is just disturbing. You know at some point in time something has fallen out of that beard into something he is cooking and someone has eaten it. Or a follicle ends up in soup. Or worse.

This seems to be the best group of chefs Top Chef has ever found. And also the most tattooed, most pierced and most bearded. The first Chef told to pack her knives and go, Jennifer, had one of the more disturbing body mutilations I've ever seen, that being her hugely stretched out ear lobes.

And then we had Jesse with those totally strange lip piercings. How does one convince oneself that piercing ones lips is a good plan? Particularly for a person who cooks for a living? Does Jesse think those studs sticking out of her lips make her more attractive?

Why would the younger of the brothers, Michael Voltaglio, have one of his arms totally painted up? He seems like such a sensible guy. Only a few don't have ridiculous tattoos, one of those being his brother Bryan. Bryan seems much too serious to have a tattoo. Then again, it won't shock me if we see him without a shirt on to find he's been totally Michael Scoffielded with tattooed recipes on his back and chest.

I don't think I've seen a tattoo on the good Jennifer chef. Or on the Frenchie, Mattin. And we've seen Mattin running around with his clothes off, with no markings apparent to me. I guess he could have "MOM" tattooed on his butt. I think we've pretty much seen all of Mattin, except for his butt, so that'd be the only place he could be hiding a tattoo, which I don't mind at all, because it highly unlikely I will ever see it.