Moving away from the Flannery discussion…I’m curious about what people thought of the actual Iron Chef battle last night. It was so highly-promoted–did you think it lived up to the hype?
Bruce
I saw all the veggies “getting broken down” and said meh. Switched the station to HBO and watched Bride Wars.
We’ll try it via TiVo tonight or tomorrow night.
I think Mario had a weaker team that he normally does. Mark Ladner seems to be very strong, Emeril not so much. Probably with some practice yes, but in this battle he looked pretty out of sorts.
I think this is a show that deserves 1 hour and not 2, but it was actually fun to see more of how they treated the ingredients.
I didn’t think it was a train wreck, but it wasn’t as interesting to me as the show’s regular format: two competitors, and one star ingredient. It was all over the place, with too many vegetables and too many cooks in the kitchen.
On the plus side, they didn’t pair the Iron Chefs with Rachael Ray or Paula Deen.
A plateful of fail, from my perspective. Over-hyped and way under-delivered.
Alton Brown’s opening bit at the White House was ridiculous. Other than flashing her trademark smile, Michelle Obama seemed like she couldn’t wait to get finished with her part of the schtick, and who can blame her?
The competition featured way too many secret ingredients, which diluted both teams’ efforts and creativity. Most of the dishes sounded, oh, fine, but hardly compelling: no trout ice cream in this episode - most wacky dish was probably the new-wave clam chowder, which looked horrific and was pretty much a bust with the judges.
All the chefs were weirdly subdued. With the exception of some repartee between Batali and Lagasse, the dialog during the competition was even more lame than usual.
The judges were a mixed bag: I thought Nigella Lawson came across as pompous and mostly off-base in her comments (and she completely misinterpreted Brown’s “too many notes” jab - watch for it). Jane Seymour was boring but okay. Natalie Coughlin was charming and surprisingly articulate, although I kind of got the impression that as a perennially-starved athlete she would happily have devoured pretty much anything placed in front of her. Also, she was significantly hotter than Nigella Lawson, who looked ghastly.
If Emeril gains any more weight his eyes won’t open. They already look like slits.
How 'bout the “worst cooks” show? For whatever reason, FoodTV has reduced everything to a contest. It was painful watching someone who has never even eaten a shrimp try to prepare one, much less prepare a dish that was pretty complex for someone with no cooking experience in competition with others.
Why not just do straight instruction with these people and see how they progress from week to week rather than offering the opportunity to be embarrassed and scolded for their efforts? It’s about like having me taste La Tache, giving me some rudimentary instructions, asking me to duplicate what I’ve tasted, and humiliating me when I can only manage plonk on my first try.
Agreed, but I loved Mario Batali. The orange crocs… the comment about defensively grabbing the tomatillos before Flay could get them… gawd, he’s wonderful.
It sure seemed like a jab to me. For anyone who missed the reference…
Didn’t watch it, but might catch a repeat. I assumed it would be fairly lame & sounds like it was. Two hours is a long time to put up with Alton Brown (I find him irritating to the point that he makes my butt itch).
Likes: I appreciated their attempt to proselytize for fresh, locally-grown vegetables and produce.
Dislikes: The show should have been one hour. Whoever wrote and produced the opening segment with Alton Brown skulking around Washington, D.C. should have been shot.
Likes: Mario Batali.
Dislikes: Emeril Lagasse. Dude, you don’t have to make EVERYTHING about New Orleans.
The judging panel seems to have been selected to make vegetables appear more exciting and enticing. Whoever did Nigella Lawson’s make-up should have been shot, along with the previously-mentioned D.C. segment producer. At least Natalie Coughlin was willing to point out that the radishes were burnt.
Not a train wreck, but hardly the culinary event that was hyped.
Bruce
i love that FLOTUS is going nuts over local, organic, veggies, etc., but they should have picked a public school in DC to do it with grade-school kids helping with the prep and then watching it live in the studio. one of the judges should have been a teacher or principal from the school so that the kids could have had a continued connection with the underlying themes.
mario and emeril need to each lose 30+ lbs. so unhealthy and terrible role models.
as it was, fairly boring television.
Great ideas, yaacov, and significantly more creative than the ones they ran with.
On a peripheral note, did anyone count how many times they played that Alton Brown/Welch’s grape juice commercial (it was Welch’s, wasn’t it?)? I didn’t, but it was well in excess of the number required to become really annoying.
Every single *&%$# commercial break, along with the promo for the Best of the Worst competition.
Bruce
We didn’t think it was as bad as some have said. It definitely was too long, an hour would have been enough. It wasn’t one of the best Iron Chefs; but it was ok, especially without commercials via TiVo.
Thoughts? I think I’m annoyed that Cablevision dropped Food TV January 1!