SEASON PREMIERE: For this Season 11 version, Padma Lakshmi takes her culinary cronies, including Tom Colicchio, to New Orleans, where everyone is expected to kick it up a notch. Among the initial challenges is to cook alligator – which I’ve done, by the way. If ever there was a use for the phrase “Tastes like chicken,” alligator is it. One time, I grilled a batch of alligator, put the leftovers in the refrigerator, and my son Mark, visiting from college and arriving late that night, scarfed two helpings of it without knowing what it was. When I asked, the next day, who had eaten my alligator, he accused me of leaving it there on purpose, because he only ate it because he thought it was chicken. True story.