What did the Chairman mean by this?

What did the Chairman mean by this?

>Watch Iron chef
>He's in the opening all the time
>Never seen an episode with him in it

He's mostly in specials because nobody ever wanted to fight him because there was no prestige in it.

He had a pretty good series against some chef they brought in from Italy.

why did they wear silk clothes? that looks really uncomfortable in a kitchen.

He was usually relegated to desert and specialty battles. They wouldn't even redesign the stage for him so that he could rise up with the other 3 Iron Chefs. However, he did get his own rising platform with a string quartet.

Either way, Kobe was a good addition, but not many took him seriously.

Kobe was ridiculously creative for someone who was trained in such a classical way. It's a shame he was never given the respect he deserved.

Fortunately, I think when they brought Iron Chef over to America, Mario Batalli actually did a REALLY good job as an Iron Chef, probably the only respectable one from the American version.

>probably the only respectable one from the American version.

I don't know, Morimoto battles from the American Iron Chef were usually top fucking tier.

Better than goddamn Bobby Flay or Cat Cora battles, anyway.

Maybe at the beginning, but Morimoto really began phoning it in after his first 10 or so battles. "Different cooking styles from around new york featuring a tartare" was the theme every single time, no matter WHAT the secret ingredient actually was.

Not to say that he was bad - I think it was just that he didn't feel threatened by anyone. And when he didn't feel threatened, he just didn't try - and won anyway.

Battle Molecular Gastronomy will always be legendary, but I think after that, he just didn't think there was any challenge any more.

Mario was the chef you never bet against until he left FN. Michael Symon quickly took over as the chef you didn't really want to face because he won all the time.

>Not to say that he was bad - I think it was just that he didn't feel threatened by anyone. And when he didn't feel threatened, he just didn't try - and won anyway.

Good point, and I think the producers tended to feel that way as well since Morimoto battles started getting rarer and rarer (though the increasing popularity of Flay probably contributed as well). My friends and I tended to joke that if it was a Morimoto battle and the ingredient was any kind of fish, you might as well just throw in the towel before you even begin.

But yeah, Iron Chef America battles were very much "surface" fights, everything SOUNDED fancy but really didn't amount to much more than what the average chef could make in their home kitchen. I've only recently started watching the original Iron Chef but I'm blown away at how imaginative some of the chefs could be with their dishes.

His earlier battles were fun to watch. Didn't just relegate himself to Italian cooking, but skirted all around the Mediterranean, including North Africa.

>Mario was the chef you never bet against until he left FN. Michael Symon quickly took over as the chef you didn't really want to face because he won all the time.
both of those guys can produce recipes, and with them actually knowing the secret ingredient ahead of time, (and possibly the judges) it was easy for them to make a well rounded menu. They are talented

Morimoto's Battle Green Onion rematch was epic because they had to use whatever was leftover in the kitchen to to turn green onion (usually a side ingredient in cook) into the primary star of their dishes.

Michael Symon and Mario Batalli were the best things to come out of Iron Chef America. Mario managed to take classic Italian and bring it up another level while still maintaining the classic taste, while Symon was daring and willing to take chances and risks to come out with what he truly believed would be the best dish, even if it meant a loss - and his risks paid off more than not.

Checking wikipedia, both had the best win/loss records of the show. I hate to say it, but the show started diving with Marc Forgione. It looked like the FN fix was in for Zakarian and Ghurnishelli.

Japanese Iron Chef was way better than the shitty American one.

Food Network jumped the shark pretty quickly. I mean who the hell wants to watch kids cooking? Or family game shows based loosely around cooking? Or Cutthroat Kitchen, of all things?

True, but American is all we have. Unfortunately, FN and Cooking Channel couldn't get the rights to all Japanese shows. If IC ever wants to go all in on DVD, etc. I'm there.

I'd say it died when Jose Garces was picked over Jehangir Mehta during The Next Iron Chef. Garces was probably the worst choice out of the top three, I'd say even Amanda Freitag was better than him, but Jehangir Mehta was brilliant.

He had style, flair, his plating was absolutely beautiful, and his food maintained a classic Indian flavor. I swear, it must have been some corporate politics that lost him the position.

There are parts of Iron Chef America that closely mimic the classic Japanese show. Check out any episode that has Mario Batalli, Masaharu Morimoto, or Michael Symon within the first 5 seasons - especially earlier on, since they drift further and further away from the Japanese show's formula as time goes on.

I'm fairly certain I used to watch Japanese Iron Chef on the food network like 15 years ago, but maybe that was a different network?

why was american iron chef so shit compared to the japanese?

Mehta wasn't going to win it after he got the "villain's" editing from FN. Whether or not he was mis-edited or came across as big of a prick in real life as he was on the show, we'll never know. That being said, he did come up with some interesting items. Not all successful, but still inventive. I was pulling for Yan to win that season, but hey...

It was on FN 2008 and onward until they relegated it to Cooking Channel as filler.

I swear, every single time FN did a "competition" for a position on their network, it was decided well in advance - mainly due to requested salary. It's fucking pathetic, and also why I don't watch anything from them any more.

Cutthroat Kitchen is fun to watch if only because it's fun to watch people come in expecting a normal cooking competition like Chopped only to get fucking shit upon by Alton Brown for 30 minutes.

>I was pulling for Yan to win that season, but hey...
I was pulling for Ming Tsai the previous season. If I'm going to watch a fucking Iron Chef battle, I'd like it to be someone that I actually know can cook and has the respect of his peers, not some head chef in some hoity-toity restaurant in San Francisco, you know?

I always thought that chefs from outside french or chinese cooking often picked him. He was well trained though and typically won in his matches. He's cool. The other chefs were more interesting imo. Look into the one where Kenichi took on some female Chinese master chef.

It started airing on FN in 1999, you goon. It went over to Cooking Channel in 2008 (It was called Fine Living channel 2008-2010).

Unfortunately, because the music they used in the show was from the film Backdraft, subsequent re-airings had the score replaced. That's sad.

I don't know, but you're absolutely correct. It was shit in a side by side comparison.

1. Culture shock. Having a different culture doing the show just made it more interesting.

2. Play-by-play commentator and the color commentator. They're 90% of the show and they constantly play off of each other. In Iron Chef America, Alton Brown does both and it just doesn't work. Now if they had gotten Alton Brown to do play-by-play announcements and a real chef like, say, Anthony Bourdain as a color commentator, that would be a hell of a show.

So I'm not allowed to have a bad memory?

Here's a hug on the way out. Save your anger for the election.

No idea. The official ICJ book says that none of the chefs liked the clothes. But damn, I can't imagine them without the robes.

>"why was american iron chef so shit compared to the japanese"
American television production is fucking baffling in this respect. The absurd camera usage, egotistical celebrities, and constant injection of anxious music seem deliberately designed to induce the maximum amount of neurotic drama possible. No reservation, humility, or dignity at all

>"Having a different culture doing the show just made it more interesting"
There is certainly an "exotic" aspect of Iron Chef Japan, watching as a foreigner, but there's a world (ha) of difference between a Hiroyuki Sakai and a counter-jumping Bobby Flay. The consummate professionalism of the ICJ Iron Chefs was awe-inspiring

>" In Iron Chef America, Alton Brown does both and it just doesn't work"
not to mention that he seems to just walk all over everyone

>"Now if they had gotten Alton Brown to do play-by-play announcements and a real chef like, say, Anthony Bourdain as a color commentator, that would be a hell of a show."
There's still the fundamental issue of the American version being reduced to a boring competition with no attempt at story or personality like the original