Top Chef

Willingboro's Kevin Sbraga - who's cooked at some of the hottest restaurants in the region - was named winner of the seventh season of the Bravo series Top Chef . Sbraga, 31, watched the taped final episode Wednesday at the North Philadelphia restaurant Osteria among a private party including his wife, Jesmary, and two children. His prizes are $125,000, a spread in Food & Wine magazine, and a showcase at the magazine's annual event in Aspen, Colo. The season, set in Washington, D.C., moved to Singapore for the last two episodes.

IT'S PRETTY HARD not to recognize former Sixers center Dikembe Mutombo . But Dana Spain , president of Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, says that she couldn't figure out why the 7-foot-2 passenger she spoke French with Sunday on a flight from Paris looked so familiar. Spain, who also works in branding and marketing, said that she and Mutombo talked real estate, including how he hasn't been able to sell his home in Villanova, and only when they traded business cards at PHL baggage claim did Spain get "clued into the fact that I'm a total f---ing idiot," she told us yesterday.

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.

10 tonight BRAVO The chefs must come up with tasty food for astronauts on space missions. With Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin (right) and guest judges Anthony Bourdain and Food & Wine magazine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin.

Every father has to share his daughter someday. It just happened a lot sooner than I expected when my 11-year-old, Alice, recently informed me that I was no longer the sole person responsible for her budding interest in a culinary career. After toting her along on hundreds of restaurant reviews since the time I could tuck her under the table in a car seat, I wondered who the other scoundrel could be. But as I watched the flicker of fanciful cakes from the TV screen twirling in her smitten brown eyes, I knew.

The classy bistro was called 10 Arts by Eric Ripert, so there was little question who the star was on the glittering opening night in the rotunda of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel back in the spring of 2008. It was, of course, Eric Ripert, the legendary chef from New York's four-star seafoodery Le Bernardin, meeting and greeting tout Philadelphia, trailing in his wake an attractive but decidedly un-legendary young chef named Jennifer Carroll. Yes, she'd worked in Ripert's Manhattan kitchen and he'd picked her to run the Ritz property.