Check, Please! Bay Area Launches 10th Season

Eight new episodes premiere Thursday, April 16, at 7:30pm on KQED 9.

 

After 121 episodes, 348 guests and 352 restaurants featured, KQED’s hit series Check, Please! Bay Area launches its 10^th season, which premieres on Thursday, April 16, 2015, at 7:30pm on KQED 9. In its nine seasons to date, the James Beard and Emmy Award–winning program has become a staple of Bay Area’s celebrated restaurant scene, featuring eateries and guests as diverse as the Bay Area itself. Each episode casts three local diners as restaurant critics. They share their favorite spots and host Leslie Sbrocco (thirstygirl, The Today Show) leads their conversation adding humor and fun… but the question always remains: Will the three guests agree about their choices?

The landmark season includes nine new episodes and three specials that bundle restaurants featured in past seasons around themes and cuisine. Season 10 continues on Thursdays at 7:30pm on KQED 9 through May 7. The second half of the new season will broadcast in September. The series also airs Sundays at 6:30pm on KQED Public Radio 88.5 FM. Watch online at kqed.org/checkplease and connect with Check Please! Bay Area on Facebook and Twitter.

“It’s been a wonderful, raucous ride to help take Check Please from season one to season 10. Through the years, I've had a variety of hairstyles, necklaces and experiences, but there's been one constant — great guests,” said Sbrocco, who shares her wine expertise with fun wine tips in each episode. Check, Please! Bay Area Series Producer Tina Salter added: “I’m impressed each year with the amazing people we meet as our guests and at the restaurants. I sincerely believe that the success of our show is a huge testament to the amazing passion we have for food in the Bay Area.”

Restaurants featured in the first half of the tenth season come from all corners of the Bay Area and include Bull Valley Roadhouse (Port Costa), Cosecha (Oakland), FuseBOX (West Oakland), Hotel Mac Restaurant (Point Richmond), Los Moles (Emeryville), Michael Warring (Vallejo), Oi-C Bowl Chinese Restaurant (Walnut Creek), Osmanthus (Oakland), PintxoPote (formerly Donostia, Los Gatos), Red Hill Station (San Francisco), Ristorante Milano (San Francisco), Scolari’s Good Eats (Alameda). The rest of the season’s restaurants will be announced at a later date.

In every Check, Please! episode, each guest chooses their favorite place to eat and the other two guests visit anonymously — the restaurants are not notified that Check, Please! “reviewers” are dining there. After trying each other’s recommendations, they join host and moderator Leslie Sbrocco to discuss, dispute, and celebrate their dining experiences with lively commentary.

On Tuesday, June 2, Check, Please! Bay Area’s 10^th Anniversary – Taste & Sip will be held at the San Francisco Design Center. Select restaurants that are featured on the current season and have been featured on previous seasons will be invited to sample recipes for attending guests. The venue holds 1,000 people, and tickets will be made available to KQED sustainers, members and general public via City Box Office in beginning to mid-May.

Check, Please! Bay Area is made possible by the generous support of Subaru, Integrated Resources Group, European Sleep Works, Oakland International Airport, Orion and CARS.

ABOUT KQED PUBLIC TELEVISION:
KQED Public Television, the PBS affiliate that serves Northern California, is one of the country’s most popular public television stations. It brings the values of public media to homes around the Bay Area with Emmy Award–winning programming that inspires, informs and entertains, including Masterpiece Classic: Downton Abbey, Masterpiece Mystery: Sherlock, American Experience, American Masters, Great Performances, POV, Independent Lens, NOVA and Nature. KQED produces local series like Check, Please! Bay Area, KQED NEWSROOM, San Francisco Opera, Truly CA and ImageMakers, as well as popular programs for national broadcast such as Film School Shorts, Essential Pépin and QUEST. KQED also distributes programming to public media stations across the country including The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, Roadtrip Nation and Joanne Weir’s Cooking School. For more information, please visit kqed.org/tv.