Rarely has there been a better excuse to use the phrase “blow the lid off” than in this week’s Village Voice “exposé” of the Iron Chef franchise. Restaurant critic Robert Sietsema confirms that—gasp—this reality show is not so abundant with reality. “Iron Chef America is more bogus than even I had imagined,” Sietsema announces.
It is clear at the taping that the Iron Chef to be challenged had been chosen beforehand—in fact, the other chefs aren’t even there, and are represented by impersonators—and that the participants had at least some knowledge of what the ingredients were going to be. While the televised version gives an air of crazed urgency, Sietsema reports that it is taped at a leisurely pace. Most shocking of all, since the judging takes about two hours to tape, the chefs must cook all new versions of the dishes that had been prepared.
“If the actual dishes produced during the contest weren’t being tasted, the competitive validity of the whole show was further undermined,” Sietsema writes. “What was the point of the race if the dishes were casually recooked for judging an hour later?” His cri de coeur: “We’d been promised moments of brilliant creativity, but what we saw were drones going about their appointed tasks with well-tested recipes. … This was no contest—it was a culinary fait accompli.”
Most commenters seem unsurprised.
Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet, pretty much wrote this exact same piece back in 2006. His feeling was that “the experience of watching Iron Chef live is a bit like the experience of a child who believes with all his heart in tooth fairies catching his mother put[ting] money under the pillow. The whole thing’s a sham!”
and that’s reality tv
Didn’t they mention all this in some “Inside” or “Making of” Iron Chef show that already aired on the Food Network? I thought everybody knew this stuff already.
Headlines for future topics, while you’re on this vein:
Lucy Ricardo is an Actress! played by Lucille Ball!
Scientists Insist the World is Round!
Sometimes Politicians Lie!
The Dominance of Hollywood: Two Actors Have Become Governor of California!
Hot Liquids Can Burn You!
“Blow the lid off?” Come on. I’m only a casual Iron Chef viewer, but even I knew most of things a long time ago. I don’t think the show goes out of their way to hide the facts or misrepresent themselves. I mean, you can clearly see that the chefs only cook one of each dish within the hour, but there are three judges plus the chairman that eat. So the “revelation” that much cooking goes on after the fact is not really that shocking. Iron Chef is a fun, tongue-in-cheek show. It’s just entertainment and to expect much more is a little silly, in my opinion.
Duh, How can anyone not know that the show is not 100% accurate. First of all, It is absolutly impossible for anyone to cook 5 dishes entirely from scratch without knowing the “secret” ingredient. Second, Hasn’t anyone ever wondered how the chefs knew which specialty ingredients or innvoative kitchen gagets to bring on the show if they didn’t know the ingredient beforehand? Thirdly, all of the iron chefs have restaurants, ( most have more than one, or their own TV shows to worry about) so naturally, they can’t all be there at the same time. Ever try to get a group of your college friends together when they live all over the country? And Lastly, ever notice that on the show they only construct one plate of each dish when there are 3 judges and the “chairman”? I don’t know about you but I don’t want to eat Trout ice cream that has melted or eat a Kobe Ribeye Steak That is cold and juiceless.!!!!!!!!! COME ON kids, it’sa TV show, it is make believe it’s not real. SO get real.
To all of this I say, “duh! It was on their own special about it. “Blow the Lid Off,” indeed.
While I don’t think they 100% know the secret ingredient, anyone who saw Morimoto’s face on the, “Chili’s” show knows they don’t know the secret ingredient, they probably know if it’s fish, meat, vegetables, etc. They have to have some communication with the Sous Chefs.
The, “Chairman” is an actor that shows up on old Sci Fi Channel movies quite a little bit. It’s a television show. If you’ve really got professional chefs running around without any knowledge about what they were going to cook, it would probably be a swear-fest. Which would be much interesting, but the FCC would have a heart attack.
As many people have pointed out, these chefs have restaurants, side ventures and lives. They’re not going to be there, unless they have to cook.
LOVE AB. He’s also said he bones up on the research every week for the secret ingredient. As I would expect.
Totally underwhelming article. Can’t see that it is a sham. It appears (shock) that Iron Chef is edited. Which is bloody obvious considering the cooking portion of the show lasts 30 minutes (not counting commercial breaks) of air time. Also: who here REALLY thinks that these extremely busy chefs are actually there for every taping. Come ON, Village Voice! Not that I expect it from you, but isn’t there some real news you can report on? Is it that bad that you don’t have anything bad to say about the current NYC administration? Sheesh!
I thought that I had read that the chefs were told a week in advance that the secret ingredient would be one of three things.
I know 2 chefs that have been on the Program. Apparently, they are told 3 or 4 options of what the secret ingredient will be, and are asked to submit shopping lists for each option. On the day of the battle, all they have to do is check out their kitchens stocks to figure out the ingredient. It would be silly to think that the chefs haven’t already ironed out all of their recipies beforehand.
My gosh do you really just blindly post any thing you read on the internet with out an iota of research? You wouldn’t have to look very hard, your sham of an alleged sham is in part the subject of Food Network’s own show Food Network Unwrapped 2 a summary of which can be found in the main Wikipedia entry for Iron Chef. Not on is it obvious, its been stated by FN over and over.You may as well be calling Fox out for the Simpsons being a cartoon and not real people.
Its really amazing if you google this today how many bloggers et al bought into and reposted this tripe without making even a token effort to validate the nonsense that hack Sietsema was spewing.
Far easier to repost than google 2 words I guess.
Interesting that Adam Roberts called the show a sham a couple of years ago and now has his own feature on foodnetwork.com.
Are all of you guys who have posted here the same ones who told me, when I was 5, that there is no Santa Claus? I believe you are.