Bravo Cooks Up “Top Chef” Mobile Game

A peek a Bravo's new Top Chef Challenge mobile phone game.

Cable network Bravo is extending its restaurant-based reality series “Top Chef” with a mobile phone game that lets users work their way up wirelessly from dishwasher to five-star chef.

The “Top Chef Challenge” game, designed by mobile content firm LimeLife, was scheduled to be promoted on last night’s “Top Chef” holiday special episode.

Players can customize their game character and start out working in a virtual restaurant kitchen as dishwashers. They encounter a series of mini-games and kitchen challenges that test their reflexes, memory and patience, and they receive advice and commentary from “Top Chef” show host Padma Lakshmi as they climb to status and fame as a head chef. A mini-game will also let players earn extra points by testing their culinary knowledge.

Depending on their carrier’s choice, users will pay either a one-time download fee of $6.99 for the game or a $2.99 monthly subscription. Right now the game is available to AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers.

“Collaborating with LimeLife to create ‘Top Chef Challenge’ was a perfect addition to our ultimate goal of suiting our audiences’ lifestyles and making Bravo media accessible on multiple platforms,” Bravo New Media Senior Vice President Lisa Hsia said in a statement.

The game is Bravo’s latest initiative to extend its broadcast properties beyond the cable box.

Last June, Bravo created a new corporate entity, Bravo Media, to expand its TV assets into other platforms, including talent management, publishing, merchandising, wireless, live events and radio. In an address to the 2007 Promax/BDA conference in New York last summer, Bravo president Lauren Zalaznick said the company would espouse a “4-D model” that surrounds its audiences with content on multiple integrated platforms, including virtual spaces and social networking sites.

“People seem very comfortable living within a cyclone of a brand,” Zalaznick told the broadcast marketing conference at that time.