Another article out today....
The Food Network’s Dirty Little Secret: Five Things You May Not ... Palm Beach Post, United States - 19 hours ago
Say it ain’t so: The Food Network’s
Iron Chef is a fraud of a show.
That’s the word from the
Village Voice’s restaurant critic, Robert Sietsema, who had the rare privilege of attending a recent taping of the popular culinary face-off. I say “rare” because there’s room for only so many folks inside the network’s Kitchen Stadium. And the press isn’t invited: Sietsema went as the guest of a culinary-industry friend. So this was really an inside look at a world few have seen (and even fewer have written about).
Among Sietsema’s revelations:
1)
Kitchen Stadium? It’s more like Kitchen Closet: As I indicated, the place can fit only so many people. But if you’re thinking that means at least a few hundred, think again. Sietsema says you’re looking at “about 30 spectators.” It’s all smoke and mirrors — literally (fog is used to carefully hide the audience). To quote Sietsema: “Only occasionally did a sweeping shot reveal the vague characters on the edges of the room, intended to make it seem like the stadium is thronged. As a TV viewer, I was under the impression that the fog was used only at the start of the show, but the fog machines kept cranking throughout the taping, concealing all sorts of details the network might not want you to see. As the taping progressed, we felt more and more like we were viewing the scene in
The Wizard of Oz when Toto pulls aside the curtain and the wizard’s tricks are revealed.”
2)
The whole thing doesn’t unfold in real time: Yes, the cooking is done within a set hour-long time-frame, but the whole affair — the introductions of the Iron Chefs, the presentation of the secret ingredient, the judging — involves several hours of taping. The bottom line: Much of the excitement and scurrying is manufactured.
3)
Body doubles do the dirty work: Sous chefs do most of the cooking. And stand-ins take the place of the Iron Chefs during the introduction ceremony. (Here’s Sietsema’s account of Mario Batali’s fill-in: He “wore Batali’s signature jams and orange plastic clogs, but jeez — this guy had more hair than Mario and was
way fatter.) So the only Iron Chef who’s really there is the one who ends up being chosen to compete (in this case, Morimoto). Which means that the whole process is a ruse — it’s all determined in advance.
4)
The “secret ingredient” isn’t so secret: Sietsema says the sous chefs moved so methodically during the hour-long cooking period that it was obvious they knew of the ingredient in advance and had a game plan. (Again, to quote Sietsema: “How else to explain the utter nonchalance displayed by the sous chefs, who fetched ingredients and blended them; toasted, fried, and roasted them; then plated them like they were enjoying a relaxing holiday in the country.”)
Suzie
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