'Top Chef' season premiere recap: The All-Stars Premiere!

Welcome to Season 8 of Top Chef, where everyone is an All-Star! They're in New York, where people constantly eat apples. I'm eating one in my apartment right now! How did they know? Duh, they're professionals. As Spike said, "Now I've kind of bloomed, and I have a career." Well, perfect. Let's get going.

I love how the editors didn't even mess around and just got right into the re-introductions featuring commentary from the chefs' rivals about what terrible people they all are. Meet season 1's Tiffani, "a snake." There's Stephen, who is "obviously a tool and a douchebag." You remember Marcel, right? That "selfish, self-centered, egotistical bastard"? Of course you do! Many of the series' best and most polarizing personalities are back in action and, as Carla said, will not be intimidated by your food. Or take it from Tre: "I ain't playin' around with this motherf---er." Okay! These people are in it to win it. Professor Richard! Gorgeous yet impossibly smug Jamie! Feisty Jen Carroll! And best of all: Fabio, who now has a bit of a mullet.

I can't help it: I love Fabio. He seems like such a faker baker (as my mom, and I guess now I, would say) much of the time, but my heart goes on. I love the accent, I love how he says whatever he wants, and I love that my delusional mind always finds some way to convince itself that whatever Fabio says just made perfect sense. Sure, maybe not objectively, but it definitely always makes sense to him. "That's just, like, Fabio's opinion, man," I find myself arguing. Is it because he really does make sense, or do I love him because he increasingly reminds me of Maksim Chmerkovskiy from Dancing With the Stars, particularly in season 1 when Maks had a ponytail? (This is especially insane because Maks is Russian. They have a similar cadence, I swear!)

The slate/cutting board has been wiped clean, but obviously intense rivalries still exist in the Top Chef kitchen, which Top Chef will have you know is outfitted with the LATEST G.E. MONOGRAM EQUIPMENT. The first Quickfire Challenge gave each season's contestants the chance to work together so they could claim bragging rights about having participated in "the best season of Top Chef" once and for all. Tons of people kept coming up to the contestants on the street and telling them they were the best -- and some, like season 3's Dale and season 6's Jen, believed the hype. From mere mortals. Fools! Luckily, deities Tom and Padma had floated down to deliver an official verdict. And the winners were....Season 4: Chicago. Antonia, Dale, Richard, and Spike won the Quickfire with their pork and black pepper sausage. Bragged Richard, who had of course used the disappointingly low-pressure nitrogen tank to make a special mustard: "Can't do Chicago without representing the avant garde." Right. Mike from season 6 wasn't buying it. "Sausage with mustard. BIG WHOOP."

NEXT: A fine reason for enthusiastic expletives.

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