The Food Network stacks the cast in the latest season of The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs.
I love cooking competition reality TV but I’m not 100% sure what to make of The Food Network’s latest season of The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs. The series is starting its fourth season collecting the superstars of cuisine together in an elimination competition that culminates in the final two squaring off in the Iron Chef kitchen. The funny thing is that just about all of the chefs already have shows on The Food Network. I’m not new to the Iron Chef world, just this battle series, and is it me or is there something fishy in this kitchen?
Isn’t that deck stacking kind of cheating? At the very least, doesn’t it smack of cable channel nepotism? What’s the fun of watching almost the entire line-up of hosts on one a cable channel pitted against one another? Where’s the variety that you get in say a Top Chef competition. Even the standard Iron Chef mixes up the participants. Ok, maybe it is just me complaining but I’m still calling it lazy.
Regardless, the show features 10 world class chefs cooking off in tough elimination rounds that will test their skills, patience, creativity and flavor prowess. Hosted by the still newly gaunt Alton Brown (I love the man, but he’s looking more like a flesh-colored Grinch every time I see him), the ten chefs open the show by throwing some compliments and smack at one another. Many have some personal grudges from previous battles on Iron Chef America and some are just feeling their professional competitive spirits kicked into gear.
For the first challenge, Brown brings the gang out into the wilderness near a lake. They are split into five teams, given basic kitchen tools and are tasked to use the environment (including edible roots, grasses and water) to turn a whole suckling pig into fantastic dishes to be served to judges Michael Symon, Judy Joo and Simon Majumdar. Some teams do better than others using their own outdoorsy backgrounds to get into the surroundings for their flavors. Other teams are just a stressful mess making matters worse by dropping pig parts onto blazing hot coal-fire grills that burn the meat hunks instantly. There is a fair amount of working around mistakes which the judges look at closely to determine resilience and creativity in adversity.
Interestingly enough, chef Spike Mendelsohn, who had an advantage in the challenge by getting to select his partner and then assigning the other chefs to one another, ends up in the bottom of the pack for cooking ribs that were too dry for the judges. He’s put in a “Death Match” against his teammate Chef Marcus Samuelsson. They both have to use a secret ingredient, the scallop, and cook it beautifully and interestingly to stay in the game. Mendelsohn thinks he’s got the perfect scallop but Marcus beats him and Spike is sent packing first.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.