Top Chef

NEW YORK - Dan Barber emerges one recent afternoon from the Union Square Greenmarket with a spring bounty: asparagus, purple kohlrabi, ramps, fiddlehead ferns and dandelion greens. They're luscious, fresher-than-fresh and Barber can't wait to get them into the kitchen. When he does, what will he do with them? The answer is pure Dan Barber. "Not a lot," he says with a smile, sipping iced coffee near the market. "As I get better and better as a chef, I'm doing less and less.

It was a fine soiree at the Union League last month, champagne flutes bobbing across what was once the North Marble Dining Room, diver scallops seared and plated one by one, and at the caviar station, three types of caviar, best sampled, guests were instructed, by dabbing a dollop just below the first knuckle of the index finger, "the way they taste it in Tashkent. " It was the first anniversary of the 148-year-old club's brave new plunge into finer dining - evident in a $6 million face-lift of the once dreary space; and in a curtain call for snowy-domed Martin Hamann, the League's Doc Halladay of a new chef.

When William F. "Willie" Wilson retired from the Long Island Railroad, they named a railroad car after him. The "Wilson Special" traveled between New York and Florida, the same route Wilson manned as master chef for about 30 years. Wilson would leave his South Philadelphia home long before dawn and catch the Amtrak to New York to make his LIRR connection. He'd be gone for days at a time, supervising his 80-man galley crew, and sometimes he slept over in New York or Florida to make another run. His penchant for punctuality earned him the nickname "Tick Tock" up and down the LIRR lines.

Usually, we can only begrudge the über-rich their private chefs. But not this summer at the Jersey Shore, where you can eat like a big shot, too. It just so happens that the two best meals I savored near the beach this season were cooked by chefs who have recently emerged from their clients' luxury cocoons - be they mountain chalets at Lake Tahoe or a penthouse soaring above Washington Square - to grace the suntanned paying public with their...

10 tonight BRAVO Sylvia Weinstock (right) is guest judge as the pastry chefs compete in a bake sale that's raising money for a high-school pep squad and glee club.

There's no official word from Bravo, but I have it that Jennifer Carroll - chef at 10 Arts in the Ritz-Carlton on Broad Street - is back for more on Top Chef . The popular cooking series is shooting Top Chef All-Stars , assembling a dozen and a half cheftestants from previous seasons. It's supposed to premiere after Thanksgiving. The Northeast Philly-raised Carroll, a runner-up on Season 6, did not return my message, and her agent, Chris Cabott , declined to comment.

* Eating well to fight hunger is also the theme for a six-course dinner "Top Chef" Kevin Sbraga is putting together at his restaurant Sbraga (440 S. Broad St., 215-735-1913, Sbraga.com ) with a stellar lineup of local chefs May 14. Nicholas Elmi, Walter Abrams, Shola Olunloyo, Jonathan Adams and Dave Katz will join him in support of Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. Tix are $150 each. * Food-truck operators stake their claim to be the city's best at the Philadelphia Vendy Awards' third-annual competition from 2 to 6 p.m. June 8. A limited number of early discount tix, $45, are available now at eventbrite.com . The event raises funds for the nonprofit Food Trust.

CHEF JENNIFER CARROLL , who became a fan favorite in her two seasons on Bravo's "Top Chef," is leaving 10 Arts by Eric Ripert at the Ritz-Carlton in October. The Somerton native's food made as much a name for her as her "Top Chef" tenure as foodies nationwide stopped at 10 Arts while in town to sample her cuisine. Carroll declined comment yesterday and referred us to her manager, Christopher Cabott, who said the chef had decided to leave to "pursue the options available to her at this stage of her career.