Me and Robin Leventhal at Citizen. [Photograph: Leslie Kelly]

With the possibility of being a participant on a reality show on my plate, I've been dying to talk to Robin Leventhal, who appeared on Season 6 of Top Chef.

We had coffee this week and she gave me the skinny about the on-screen drama viewers ate up.

"It was intense," she said. "But I'm so glad I did it."

Leventhal said there was nothing cooked up about the friction between she and Eli Kirshtein.

"I wanted to be civil, but Eli chose to make it a big deal," she said.

All that's ancient history, best viewed during one of those Top Chef marathons that occasionally appear on Bravo.

Since the show wrapped, Leventhal has been working on various projects and contemplating her next move. She has done some special dinners and menu consulting around Seattle, but is looking to develop some food products and design tableware. She put out feelers recently at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco.

One thing she isn't considering is diving back into the restaurant biz.

"I could reopen Crave (her restaurant that closed in 2008 after the lease expired), but running a restaurant is so stressful," she said. "I'm trying to re-embrace my art and see where that leads." (She has a master's degree in ceramics.)

While appearing on Top Chef means people now recognize her in the supermarket and in airports and stop her to say hello, fame doesn't translate to fortune if you don't win the whole enchilada. Which leads to that obvious question: Why do people want to be on reality shows?

Robin said the opportunity came along at a good time and she wanted "to see where it would lead." Ditto that for me!

About the author: Former Seattle Post-Intelligencer restaurant critic Leslie Kelly has been apprenticing in professional kitchens since the newspaper folded in March 2009 and chronicling her culinary journey from pen to pan for Serious Eats. She also blogs at LeslieKellyWhiningandDining.blogspot.com and is working on a story-telling project for Northstar Winery following one wine from the vine to the table.