Can Top Chef TV Dinners Live Up to Billing?

Schwan's Home Service is selling frozen Top Chef dishes. Can reality live up to reality TV?

Colicchio: Lisa Lake / Getty

Chef Tom Colicchio, left, and a Top Chef-branded frozen meal.

If you want to understand the disconnect between watching cooking shows and wanting to cook, get this: Schwan's Home Service is offering Top Chef--branded frozen meals. The idea that hard-core fans who study contestants' knife skills every week would choose to order from a giant company that's been delivering frozen food to rural America for 57 years doesn't surprise Harry Balzer, who tracks food trends for the market-research firm NPD Group. "You're going to eat four to five times today, and the one thing I know you're going to do is try to get someone else to prepare those meals," he...

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