The hit cooking show Top Chef is currently being filmed in Kentucky and today the cast and crew paid a visit to the Applebee’s on Nicholasville Road. “Lexington is doing a lot of interesting things with their food culture,” said food critic Francine Forte, “and one of them is still treating Applebee’s as a real dining option.”

Top Chef producer Debora Dunkinsten explained that Lexington was an obvious second choice city to film in after Louisville, as if we haven’t heard that before. “Travel and Leisure recently touted the city as having one of the most exciting culinary scenes in the country, which isn’t easy to achieve for a city without a Medieval Times.”

The Top Chef contestants took a tour of Applebee’s during lunch hour. They were reportedly surprised at how few people were there. Head cook Billie Prentiss walked them through the kitchen with a half-smoked cigarette stuck in his hairnet. “The city itself has a unique flavor all its own. Lexington is a mélange of traditional authentic cuisines and punk rock boiling together in a big burgoo pot of southern charm and bourbon. It’s this sort of welcoming of culture, sound, smells, and art that allows the city to dare enough to dream of having not one but two Chuy’s locations.”

The cook pulled out his phone and began to read off a recipe that he found on Bing. “This recipe has been passed down generation after generation. It starts off with a splash of limestone water and the zest of the bluegrass of a nearby horse farm. From these humble beginnings it finishes off the only way we know how, and that’s in the microwave, to achieve our signature sort of burned during the reheating process riblets flavor.”

Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio took aside a producer and asked them if they were getting canceled or why else were they in Kentucky.

The contestants competed for the next fifteen minutes to cook a somewhat edible dish, which is about half the time and twice the effort that Applebee’s usually takes.