Top Chef, Bravo's supposedly "upscale" cooking competition show that is really about three or four food snobs berating 15 or so drunken egomaniacs for an hour, is filming, tonight!, at hoity-toity midtown restaurant Le Bernardin. The gourmet seafood restaurant-three Michelin stars! 20th best restaurant in the country!-has lent out its own top chef, Eric Ripert, as a guest judge to the show in years past, but this will be the first time the cameras have entered the hallowed eatery's inner sanctum. See you in hell, refined elegance! I mean the restaurant has a jacket-required dress code, for God's sake. Their tasting menu is $220 a head (with wine pairings)! It's one of those storied haunts that needs only to quietly go about its gourmet way to drum up praise and customers. But now, like Faye Dunaway and now Vogue before it, Le Bernardin is bowing down to the reality gods in search of, well, that hideous term "relevance." While this evening's reserved patrons won't actually be served by the blotto, under-the-bus-throwing, vain yet desperate contestants, they still have to sign waivers (to be faxed over!) and deal with camera crews and all that reality jazz. CUSTOMER 1: I do say, Harold, there seems to be a lapel mic in my Kindai Maguro. CUSTOMER 2: Oh Evelyn, do shut your face.