There's a new Iron Chef in town. Well, three of them anyway :). The Food Network is starting a new Iron Chef series called Iron Chef America with Iron Chefs Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali and Bobby Flay. No, this isn't the horrendous Iron Chef USA which aired on UPN (and starred William Shatner as the host). No, this one is completely different and, as far as I can tell, a good deal of fun.
This time around, Alton Brown takes on the commentator role and some Asian guy takes on the role of Chairman. According to the commercials, the show premiers on January 16 at 9/8c. However, they’ve already aired a few episodes. Or something. Over the weekend, they aired a couple episodes in a row where they paired the new Iron Chefs with some of their Japanese counterparts (Flay vs Sakai and and Puck vs Morimoto). As the episodes aired, the main titles identified it as “Iron Chef America: Battles of the Masters”. So, perhaps those were exhibition matches of some sort.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the show. I won’t spoil the secret ingredients of thosee twe episodes (in case you haven’t seen them yet) but I think the Flay/Sakai battle had a more adventurous ingredient. It threw them off a bit, at first, and that always makes the battles more interesting. However, the Puck/Morimoto battle had an ingredient that even I have in my kitchen; the two chefs had little trouble cooking with it and it wasn't much of a challenge for them.
Alton Brown as a commentator is both good and bad. He’s knowledgeable and charismatic but I get the feeling that he’s more accustomed to having a more scripted show (like his show, Good Eats). So, when it comes time for him to say things, he almost seems nervous about keeping the air full, as if having preventing dead air were his primary goal. And, in Alton's case, that unfortunately means plenty of vocalized pauses.
Common among amateur speakers — and a personal pet peeve of mine — vocalized pauses are those uhms and erms which some speakers use to fill the air between thoughts. From what I’ve read, it stems from an apprehension that any blank space would allow someone else to interrupt the speaker; of course, in the case of a television commentator (and most other situations where vocalized pauses arise), there is no one else who would be interrupting the speaker. I like Alton’s commentary, but I hope that’s one habit which he can shed.
Another interesting factor of the show — both for Iron Chef America and the original Iron Chef — is the celebrity judges. In the few episodes, the featured judges were mostly B-list celebrities (like that guy who played Gunther on Friends), though I don’t mean that in a bad way. However, the judges in this series were almost too lenient on the chefs. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that any dish from these chefs would likely be stupendous, but if they only give complements then it makes it all the more difficult to taste the food vicariously. Good and bad parts aside, the show is still very young and I can’t wait for the next episodes.
Huh. I was under the impression that Morimoto was going to be one of the regulars, not Wolfgang Puck. Morimoto is in the promos with Flay and Batali.
I’ve decided that part of Alton Brown’s vocal tics are a nod to Hattori and Fukui from the original program (particularly given that it would be easy to voiceover his parts in editing, which is probably when they’re mostly recorded anyway), much like the floor guy’s “Alton!” has the same frantic quality as “Fukui-san!”.
You may be on to something, Julie. Still, I recall that Puck, Batali and Flay were on those three pedestals as if they were the Iron Chefs (just as in Iron Chef Classic). I guess we’ll see.
I have seen the series thus far and am thoroughly dissapointed. Iron Chef (original) was about presenting the ingredient in the bravest and newest ways. Iron chef America is about plating?
The judges for the most part have been good, but please give Steingarten a rest. His table manners alone make me question his expertise.
I just saw ICA with Cora vs Choy & one of the judges (the fat, female one, right next to Martin Yan) is just plainly ignorant. I don’t know why she was chosen to be one of the judges. She keeps complaining about her clam. What the heck does she know when all she seems to eat are tacos & burritos.