Iron Chef: Quest For An Iron Legend - General Discussion

[Stardancer Supreme]

On 7/5/2022 at 10:40 AM, SnarkShark said:

Well, that was the original model method.   And would you argue three Michelin star restaurant owning chef Dominique Crenn NOT being qualified?

I'll be honest; I didn't think Curtis Stone was on the same level as Tsai, Samuelsson, Crenn, and Camera. But he definitely outclassed that chef with a mullet.  Morimoto has been an Iron Chef the majority of his career; he seems much happier to not be on the cooking side of the kitchen!  I can't stand Bobby Flay, and it is good to have a team of Iron Chefs who aren't beholden to FN.  

[MaggieG]

I don't like seafood so I didn't enjoy the last episode. But I did like a lot of the dishes throughout the show. 

Also, love Danny Trejo!

[libgirl2]

18 hours ago, MaggieG said:

I don't like seafood so I didn't enjoy the last episode. But I did like a lot of the dishes throughout the show. 

Also, love Danny Trejo!

My cousin and her husband just met him and a horror convention. They go to many of those and I'm sure they met him before. I wish I could! 

[Stardancer Supreme]

On 6/18/2022 at 4:59 AM, Fukui San said:

• Alton and Kristen eat while Chairman does not. Approve! Hosts are able to lead the conversation a bit to cover the bases. Mark Dacascos dutifully ate everything set in front of him for however many seasons of ICA there were.... and never said a thing about any of them. I actually think he's probably not much of a food person at all which made his having this job hilarious, that he's merely tolerating eating some of the best food possible. I'd love to have that confirmed or not.

Incidentally, Ming Tsai seems to have not aged a goddamn day in the last 20 years whilst Mark Dacascos.... has. He's certainly still limber though you notice he's not doing backflips anymore, but his face is weathered and he's probably playing more old master roles in his acting. 

I didn't notice that MD was not at the judge's table at first.  But he chews so much scenery every episode, he may not need to eat the actual food. When the camera pans to him stalking the stage of Kitchen Stadium, I just laugh.

[dovegrey]

For the finale, my SO and I didn't understand the logic behind each Iron Chef having 60 minutes each to prepare one dish, but the underdog competitor had 60 minutes to prepare all five dishes with two (?) sous chefs. Kinda takes the competition out of it.

[Taeolas]

On 6/26/2022 at 12:46 AM, GaT said:

"extricate" does not sound like he was on good terms with FN. Unfortunately, I never really liked him, so that may be part of the reason this was mostly background noise for me.

I'm not sure about the details, but I think Alton was REALLY frustrated with how FN treated Cutthroat Kitchen towards the end, and Good Eats seems to have been similarly mistreated. So I'm not overly surprised that Alton cut ties with FN. 

Really from the sounds of it, FN is starting to have a lot of problems with their talent. IIRC  they almost let Flay go a year or two ago, and I get the feeling their bakers are starting to break away.

As for this show, I'm fine with the Iron Chefs. They performed well and put up some great stuff. Curtis and Marcus were the two I most recognized, but all 3 did great. Marcus and Curtis from what I've noticed aren't as tied to FN; if anything they're more tied to Bravo and Top Chef in my experience (which can be confusing because TopChef airs on Food Network Canada :) ), and the Fox cooking shows. But I suspect Bravo and Fox's chef contracts are probably lax enough to allow work on Netflix. 

As for the season ending challenge, I'm fine with it, and the Challenger certainly put up an excellent fight. Sure it isn't "fair", but this type of "fairness" isn't to be expected on Iron Chef. It's underdog vs the expert(s)

[blackwing]

Since we didn't have individual threads, I was waiting until I watched the whole series before reading and commenting.  After Esther Choi defeated Marcus Samuelsson, I was really rooting for her to be the top challenger who would advance to the finale, so I'm glad it was her.

I wasn't exactly clear on the point of the finale either.  If Esther beat all five Iron Chefs, then she becomes the first ever Iron Chef Legend.  And???  Does that mean she would be an Iron Chef in the next season?  Or is it just bragging rights?  Frankly, I knew from the start that she was destined to lose.  Because what would it say about the show in its first re-booted season if the "Chairman's" "handpicked" star chefs all collectively lose to a challenger?  It would say that maybe those five weren't the best choice and the winning challenger should have been selected.

It seems telegraphed that for Season 2, the Challenger is going to win the golden knife.  But now they will have more of a story... after seeing his best challenger defeated in Season 1, the "Chairman" is determined to search far and wide for a challenger worthy of the task blah blah blah.

I didn't understand the point of having the episode where the Iron Chefs paired off and battled each other... seemed like that was just a filler episode to get more episodes into the season.

On 7/16/2022 at 7:47 PM, dovegrey said:

For the finale, my SO and I didn't understand the logic behind each Iron Chef having 60 minutes each to prepare one dish, but the underdog competitor had 60 minutes to prepare all five dishes with two (?) sous chefs. Kinda takes the competition out of it.

Yep, totally unfair, and even she said it.  Five against three.  Each of the five have 60 minutes to make one single dish, while Esther and her two sous chefs (who were working at her direction) had to come up with five dishes.

Her menu was much more cohesive, it told her life story as a chef.  Each dish represented one of her stops along the way on her "culinary journey" (eyeroll).  Meanwhile, the Iron Chefs were all "we're five people working completely independently so everyone just have at it... oh, we are telling a story about "global cuisine".  Ok.

On 7/11/2022 at 4:37 PM, Stardancer Supreme said:

I'll be honest; I didn't think Curtis Stone was on the same level as Tsai, Samuelsson, Crenn, and Camera. But he definitely outclassed that chef with a mullet.  Morimoto has been an Iron Chef the majority of his career; he seems much happier to not be on the cooking side of the kitchen!  I can't stand Bobby Flay, and it is good to have a team of Iron Chefs who aren't beholden to FN.  

I agree, Curtis Stone is by far the weakest of the Iron Chefs.  He's a TV chef with a pretty face, that's about it.  And they needed to get one white male in there.  I didn't find anything particularly interesting or inventive about his dungeness crab curry... it was a curry and he added some finger limes because some old aboriginal dude introduced them to him.

I thought Marcus Samuelsson's dish sounded disgusting.  Chicken skin on lobster?  I love fried chicken skin and I love lobster, but together, they don't sound appealing at all.  I couldn't tell if he was making just a fried lobster (which sounds like a waste of lobster since you'd mostly be tasting fried skin) or if it was supposed to be more than that.  Also, I didn't understand at all what he called his dish, and I kept waiting for Kirsten or Alton to explain it... and nobody ever did.  I think it was "my version of a Lobster Bird".  What is that?  His plate also looked extremely sloppy, it looked like someone just threw food on the plate.  But no comments about the appearance.

Ming Tsai to me is the king.  Everything he does is exquisite, he is far superior to any of the rest of them.

I absolutely love Dominique Crenn.  French cuisine is my favourite, and I loved every single one of her dishes.  Why doesn't she have a bigger presence on reality cooking shows?

Having never seen Gabrielle Camara before, and admittedly not being the biggest fan of Mexican cuisine (I have zero spice tolerance), I wasn't prepared to like her.  But I liked her energy and confidence and she seems very competent.

If I ranked the Iron Chefs, it would be 1) Ming, 2) Dominique, 3) Gabrielle, 4) Marcus, and a distant 5) Curtis.

On 7/15/2022 at 10:05 AM, Stardancer Supreme said:

I didn't notice that MD was not at the judge's table at first.  But he chews so much scenery every episode, he may not need to eat the actual food. When the camera pans to him stalking the stage of Kitchen Stadium, I just laugh.

I truly cannot stand him.  I loathed him for years on ICA, and that loathing carried over to his appearances on Hawaii 5-0.  I dislike when he bugs his eyes out, I hate his stupid martial arts moves, I hate the way he talks especially when he announces the ingredient in some kind of faux-Japanese accent, I hate his stupid phrases, I hate the way he paces back and forth, I hate how Alton has to call attention to what he is doing, because honestly, who cares?  Completely extraneous and useless.

[dleighg]

53 minutes ago, blackwing said:

think it was "my version of a Lobster Bird".  What is that? 

I don't recall this, but if that's what he said it was probably a riff on the most famous item on his Harlem restaurant (at least as I understand it-- I've never been there), which is (I believe) fried chicken called "Yardbird" https://www.redroosterharlem.com/menu

[Fukui San]

I went to Netflix and saw that there's now an eight episode series called Iron Chef: Brazil and an upcoming Iron Chef: Mexico. 

It looks like, much like Nailed It!, Netflix is filming multiple countries' versions of the show in the same studio. Wikipedia suggests that it's only those two countries. Pity.

I watched just enough of Brazil to get the gist. They dispensed with the Chairman mythology. There are just two presenter ladies. There are seven Iron Chefs going against seven challengers, and the highest scoring challenger will go against the Iron Chefs. Two lead judges and a rotating third guest celebrity judge. It looks every bit as elaborately produced as the Iron Legend version.

[ombre]

Boy, I haven't watched any version of Iron Chef in a looooong time. I mostly watched the Japanese version and then probably saw some US stuff over a decade ago. And I really haven't watched much cooking TV (other than gbbo) in at least as long. I'm just so fascinated at how the world of food TV has changed. Yes, yes, there's still a love and veneration for French cuisine, but everything else is.... Wow. I mean, I do the same in my cooking - a tagine one night, tacos another, etc - but it's still fun to see how wildly mixed the culinary influences are.  

I miss the more concise ingredients of the original, and don't see what the point is to the themes (tailgating, medieval, etc), but I'd forgotten how much *fun* this shoe can be. I really can't stand these shows where there's a major cash prize and a feeling of utter desperation.  This (rather like gbbo, although I know well that that shoe is a major launch pad for new careers) feels just light and creative and joyful. Glad they made it! 

Also, brown and kish are just lovely. Enthusiastic and geeky and enjoying one another. And it feels like the judges are rooting for everyone to do well and delighted when they do. Hoe many times do they measure the food by the amount of joy it brings? That prioritization of joy feels infectious. 

Edited August 30, 2022 by ombre

[Infie]

I was cheering so hard for Esther by the end, and she lost by just one point!  Well done, especially given how the deck was stacked against her.  I hope she gets to return as a challenger for second season.  I don't think that the result was necessarily pre-determined - Stephanie Izzard won Iron Chef Gauntlet in its first season which had a similar (though one dish at a time) idea of beating all three Iron Chefs - but I think that she leaned away from the seafood a couple of times and that was what took her out.  

I enjoyed the Iron Chef teams vs each other episode!  Maybe I watch for a different reason than other folks - I just really enjoy watching people have fun and being creative doing the things that they love, whether it has a specific narrative point or not.  I roll my eyes at MD, but he's also clearly having a blast, so I say go for it. 

My favourite Iron Chef America episode was the one where the challenger did not bring sous chefs with him, and so Michael Symon decided to also cook alone, so his sous chef team got to drink and heckle him from the sidelines.  So much fun!

Anyhow - I loved getting to see Kitchen Stadium again, and I will definitely watch if they do another season.