Tonight’s Top Chef live blog with TOC recapper Julia Kramer is shaping up to be quite the food-blogger party.

In addition to many TOC staffers who’ll be participating, we’re pleased to welcome some special guests. Scheduled to join us tonight are: MenuPages Chicago blog mistress Helen Rosner, Chicagoist food and drink writer Laura Stolpman, Gapers Block Drive-Thru writer Andie Thomalla, HungryMag.com’s Michael Nagrant, Lockwood chef Phillip Foss, and LTHForum’s Ron Kaplan a.k.a. Ronni Suburban.

We had a lot of fun when we did this last year, and expect that tonight will be a good time as well. So join us tonight at timeoutchicago.com/blog at 8:30pm for some pre-show festivities (read: making sure all the tech stuff works right) then we’ll commence to chatting when the show starts at 9pm.

Note: If you’re out and about tonight, I’d recommend you head to the Hideout for tonight’s Soup and Bread event where Gapers Block’s Andrew Huff, Cinnamon Cooper and Robyn Nisi will be dishing out the goods at 5pm. Then come home and drag your laptop onto your full belly and hang out with us.

UPDATE: Grub Street is surmising that Stefan is not the eventual winner tonight since a clip from Bravo indicates he cooked the strongest dish.