Kara Alloway is planning a family trip to Machu Picchu this summer.

Having held down the maiden season of The Real Housewives of Toronto — complete with its share of spats, squabbles and psychological warfare — how hard can it be? Compared to the show, the old Inca Trail sounds like a cakewalk.

“I’ve always wanted to go,” the tele-socialite says over a meet recently at Soho House.

OK, the show. Ever since the local spinoff of the monster-Housewives franchise began its woozy run on the Slice channel in March, one thing has been made abundantly clear: without Kara, would there even be a show? Let’s be real. The centre of much of the YYZ hoo-ha — some might call her a villainess — she’s been Topic A, B and C. So much so that when the rest of the ladies are not talking about Kara, they’re talking about not talking about Kara.

Joan, Jana, Roxy, Gregorianne and Ann. They sotto voce about Kara. They game-theory about Kara. They even bond through Kara, there being nothing like a common foe to bring womankind together, after all.

In the world of the show, she’s the human equivalent of pesto sauce: some might not care for it and some might really love it, but everybody has an opinion on it. Pesto cannot be ignored.

Asked how life has changed lately, Alloway — the fashion-loving, born-again mother of three, who I’ve known from the margins of society for some time — says she gets recognized more often now at Longo’s.

“It was the frozen foods aisle,” she adds, with a healthy sense of the absurd. Oh, and Pusateri’s. She also got stopped at the upscale grocery mart.

“Now, all you need is Whole Foods to make it a trifecta,” I interject.

We both mull on this, and then both decide that the shoppers at Whole Foods are probably too smug to ever admit to having watched Housewives.

Having a proud PhD in Housewives myself — I’ve watched every season of every city in the franchise for years, and can parse and decode the in-between-the-lines of any meta-narrative in any scene in any episode — I’ve come bearing tons of questions. Alloway, however, is more focused on the future and waves off specific rehashes of the show. If she’s bothered by being called the “Most Hated Woman in Toronto” — by Roxy Earle, her co-star — she’s clearly decided to stick to that old showbiz adage: never let them see you sweat.

Asked if she’s still friendly with any of the other “wives,” or has heard from them, Kara will only smile benevolently.

Asked what she thinks of the business idea recently floated by her show nemesis Roxy — a closet-sharing concept that seemed to me like an Airbnb for high-end clothes — Kara only lifts one-fifth of one eyebrow.

Asked if anything surprised her about any of the other women, Kara is back to smiling again.

Though I’m clearly not going to get her to revisit one of the earliest contretemps on Episode 3 of the show — an arc set around a dinner party she hosted at her house in Muskoka, when one of the other ladies seemed hell-bent on skinny-dipping — I can only assume she stands by what she penned recently on her blog about the incident.

Peeved that some got rowdy with her family present, Alloway wrote, and I quote: “Any houseguest, dinner invite or social contact should, we hope, be aware of what is appropriate behaviour in front of children. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we are let down, and the ‘morning after’ we have to spend time with our children explaining to them why getting drunk is never an excuse for rude behaviour. No kid wants to see mom’s friend undress . . .”

Today, looking swish in a leopard-print Chloe coat, and clearly more partial to listening than spouting, she is patient while I jabber on about my own take on the Toronto version of Housewives (which has nothing to do with the shows in the States produced by Bravo): strictly from a production point of view, it all comes across as both overproduced and underproduced, as exemplified by the restaurant backdrops, which are totally tone-deaf and violate the subtle cinema verité of the other shows.

To the eagle-eyed watcher, it’s a problem best reflected in the manner in which the women inanely shuttle around everywhere in SUV stretch limos, as noted by Toronto Life recapper Allison Smith: “These producers are getting lazy. It’s also becoming painfully obvious that the only automobile they know how to get a camera crew into is an SUV stretch limo. In this episode alone, Kara takes this party bus of a vehicle from Rosedale to King West for lunch, and women in groups of two or three take SUV limos from the Beaches to King St. and from downtown to a golf course in Brampton first thing in the morning.”

Who in Toronto society circles travels like that, save for party-hardy kids on King West?

From my eye, the show seems like a Season 1 or 2 throwback to the Bravo franchises of Orange County or NYC, which was, like, 10 years ago. The entire ecosystem of Housewives since then has become much more sophisticated and complex. Bottom line, I feel like I’m watching a Christopher Guest version of a Real Housewives, which is weird, since the original shows are pretty satirical, so it’s like watching a satire of a satire. Confusing.

Alloway laughs at that one. Seemingly much more Zen than she comes across on TV, Alloway is more interested in talking about some of the charities she’s keen on. Having always had a foot in philanthropy — she and her family have done stuff like travelling to Nicaragua to help install reverse-osmosis water filters — her attention has turned to some of the work needed closer to home, like the organization U for Change, a young person mentorship that began here in St. James Town.

Crediting the show, and the platform it’s given her, she says, “before, I was more focused on overseas . . . but it’s repurposed me.”

Also on the horizon for Alloway: a trip to Los Angeles, where she has a meeting with a prominent agent. In some ways, it’s a full circle for the woman who had actress ambitions when she lived in L.A. eons ago (and where, in a weird cross-over, she became pals with Real Housewives of Beverly Hills staple Kyle Richards, whom she met in acting class). She’s remained friendly with the wider Hilton clan (Kyle is the sister of Kathy Hilton).

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It’s almost like it was meant to be.

Asked if there’s anything she would have done differently on her show, Alloway again shrugs it all off but does disclose this: “I feel like I’m watching a third party.”

Pass the pesto, will you?