This week, Bravo.com premiered the first episode of Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen, an online-only series in which two chefs, eliminated from the TV show, compete head-to-head in one final challenge. The winning chef each week goes on to cook against the next eliminated chef; this proceeds until the finale, when the remaining chef will be able to rejoin the competition.

Last Chance Kitchen is fine, on a creative level — it’s a well-paced and professional package that adheres closely to the show’s format (overly dramatic music stings and all). But as a case study in integrating web content into a pre-established series, it’s a potential disaster, largely because of its distribution.

I will not make fun of the fact that the Bravo website, in lieu of embeddable video, is offering a widget to distribute Last Chance Kitchen — because I am kind, and also because the series is thankfully also available on Hulu.

But while super-fans may already be subscribed to Top Chef on Hulu or visiting Bravo.com on a daily basis, for most of the show’s 1.6 million viewers, the only way they’ll remember that Last Chance Kitchen exists is if the show uses precious ad minutes to nag them into going online and watching. As the Los Angeles Times’s John Horn complained, “you have to get up from the TV, start up your laptop and (of all the indignities!) be forced to watch the commercials.”

If Last Chance Kitchen were Hulu Plus and available on phones, tablets or other connected devices, that would be a significant improvement. Unfortunately, it’s not. UPDATE: Last Chance Kitchen can be seen on mobile and tablet platforms via this link or the Bravo now app.

In fact, Hulu’s note about Bravo programming is one of the more peculiarly-worded ones I’ve seen: “Hulu can offer a select number of full-length episodes from Bravo’s lineup each calendar month. The episodes featured and when they are posted are at Bravo’s discretion.” In short: Don’t blame us. It’s Bravo that’s being stingy.

Last Chance Kitchen also proves problematic when you consider how it changes the competition. Let’s say the winner of this first Last Chance Kitchen (no spoilers) goes on to dominate each subsequent episode — competing against chefs who were eliminated later and are thus, by the logic of the show, better chefs. While winning 12 cook-offs against arguably more talented cooks is an impressive feat, it’s an entirely different experience than the challenges the actual cheftestants will be going through — challenges meant in theory to evaluate each chef’s skill in handling a variety of situations. And so when the winner of Last Chance Kitchen re-enters the competition after not having been on television for potentially weeks, he or she will be altering the narrative of the show.

Top Chef has been nominated for Emmys for its efforts to integrate the web and TV in the past — some of the work they’ve done with online polling and Twitter is groundbreaking. In theory, this is what convergence culture creates: the blurring of lines between television and web to tell a story richer than the sum of its parts. But Last Chance Kitchen may well be a major misstep for the show.

That’s because, when creating an experience on multiple platforms, you either have to make sure that each element can be enjoyed separately with no consequences, or make sure that all elements of the experience are easily accessible. For Last Chance Kitchen, neither of these things is true.

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VoltaggioBrothers.com, which features the two dueling chef-siblings in blog and video form, didn’t have the smoothest launch — when the site came online the day after the Top Chef finale aired, it did so without a single mention of the finale’s results, instead featuring a bare bones introductory message. (It wasn’t until much later the next day that the site addressed the finale.) Given that the final episode had been pre-taped and thus both Bryan and Michael knew who had won well before its airing, this seemed like a poor bit of strategizing that kept them from capitalizing on their status as first and second place winners of the sixth season.

However, I put the site in my bookmarks and resolved to check it out later on down the line — and having done so a few months later, am pleased to report that the site has evolved nicely as a community devoted to fine cooking in both home and professional kitchens.

The credit for this is due entirely to the fact that the site’s blog draws heavily from the attached forum. By 4chan standards, it can hardly be called hopping, but there are some interesting discussions occurring. And, most importantly, cool recipes and food experiments from the forums have been pulled out into individual posts on the main blog, bylined to Bryan or Michael. It’s a great way to reward those users who are fully engaged in the conversation — the only downside was that I couldn’t see much evidence that Bryan and Michael themselves contribute that often to the forum discussion.

VoltaggioBrothers.com, the site and user experience, is an EQAL partner, and uses the lonelygirl15 creators’ Umbrella site platform for blogging and user interactivity. EQAL Co-Founder Greg Goodfried also directs and produces the videos, and confirms that the Voltaggio brothers are the creative force behind the site. Because both men are incredibly busy with their full-time work as chefs, they aren’t necessarily the sole authors of blog posts in their name; however, according to Goodfried, they do source, read and proof everything before it’s published. There’s also the occasional personal touch, such as when Bryan posted about potential dopplegangers for himself and Michael.

The other clear sign of their involvement is the video content, which isn’t necessarily regular in its production, but does offer interesting tips on things like the sous vide technique and making applesauce with a microwave and blender (I may actually go try that last one out after finishing this post, as it sounds awesome). The videos are tight, clean and engaging, shot in both Michael’s kitchen at The Langham and Bryan’s kitchen at Volt, and give fans a chance to reconnect with the two brothers not just as chefs, but as personalities.

A reality show stint is no guarantee of real success in this world — sometimes, even winning second place isn’t quite enough. But for Bryan and Michael, giving their post-Top Chef careers an interactive twist not only gives them an edge in the web space, but also makes it clear to the world that when all is said and done, it really does come down to the food for them.

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