Just seconds into the first episode of "Chef Academy," a reality series premiering Monday, Nov. 16, on Bravo, viewers learn that chef Jean Christophe Novelli was voted "World's Sexiest Chef" by The New York Times. Maybe that's why, when the world-renowned, French-born chef selects nine students to be test subjects for a proposed branch of his culinary institute in Los Angeles, he focuses primarily on one quality: passion.

"If there is no passion, they are not welcome," says Novelli, who arrives in California with Michelle, his pregnant fiancee, and Steve Kitchen, his executive chef. Although jet-lagged, Novelli and Kitchen immediately begin interviewing applicants and giving them their first challenge: Prepare an egg any way they wish on a battered frying pan and hot plate.

Novelli and Kitchen nevertheless find promising students with various experience levels, who are put to a series of tests as they study under Novelli. Flunk three and you're out. Obviously, there's plenty of built-in stress, but this is no "Hell's Kitchen." Novelli is quick to praise when merited and finds stony silence more effective than screaming.

"They had to deliver every day, because I take no prisoners," he says. "Every day they walked through the kitchen doors, they were excited to learn something new, but they also were trembling, because there was that anxious moment where they thought, 'Will I be going to the chop?' It was a good atmosphere, because I don't abuse or swear at them. I'm just the way that I am."

Among the more interesting students to emerge in the first episode are Emmanuel DelCour, a transplanted Frenchman so laid back you expect him to nod off, and Suzanne Winn, a flamboyant blonde who seems to be auditioning for her own show – possibly "The Real Housewives of Mission Viejo."

"All we did each day was combine the five senses in a certain way," Novelli says. "The only things that allow you to do that are making love and cooking." Spoken like a true Frenchman.