Sideshow: Philly's Elmi wins 'Top Chef'

Nicholas Elmi scored major national culinary cred for Philadelphia Tuesday night by winning the crown on Bravo's Season 11 Top Chef, following in the footsteps of the Season 7 winner, Philly's Kevin Sbraga.

Elmi, the owner of Laurel, a new BYOB on East Passyunk, beat his final competitor Nina Compton, the St. Lucia-born chef de cuisine of Scarpetta Miami, in a multi-course showdown in Hawaii. But Elmi, the former chef at Le Bec-Fin and Rittenhouse Tavern, had some sous-chef help from homie Jason Cichonski, the Ela chef who was booted earlier in the show.

Among the winning dishes was Elmi's shrimp-bisque take on Cichonski's signature scallop noodles. The reward? Elmi wins $125,000 and a spread in Food and Wine magazine. (See Craig LaBan's review of Laurel in Arts & Entertainment Sunday.)

He's barely been back on TV the space of a bated breath - and Michael J. Fox is already gone.

Variety reports that NBC has canceled the Spin City star's Thursday-night comedy, The Michael J. Fox Show. This after it's been on the network for a mere 15 episodes!

Ironic: Fox's 1980s classic Family Ties was part of NBC's then-winning Thursday-night comedy block.

The 64th Berlin Film Festival, now through Feb. 16, will honor two recently departed film stars, the great German thesp Maximilian Schell (Judgment at Nuremberg; Stalin), who died Feb. 1 at 83, and American Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), who died Sunday in New York of an apparent drug overdose.  

Here's a belated shout-out to a 2013 Penn grad who took one home this year. That would be Tony Peebles, sax player for the Pacific Mambo Orchestra, a 19-piece Latin big band out of San Francisco that won Best Tropical Latin Album, besting Marc Anthony, Los Angeles Azules, and Carlos Vives.

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