Iron Chef: America vs. USA

By JULIETTE ROSSANT It seems that Iron Chef is relocating rather permanently to the USA in the upcoming year, as Iron Chef America, which will begin a 10-episode shoot in the first week of October 2004 for the Food Network, reports Broadcast & Cable. Making the cut from trial runs (sorry, "specials") this past Spring, reports The New York Post, are Food Network chef stars Bobby Flay and Mario Batali, as well as the long-lived original Masaharu Morimoto (who now owns Morimoto restaurant in Philadelphia) for a January 2005 premiere. Surviving as commentator will be Good Eats hero Alton Brown. Challengers are said to include former Food Network star Ming Tsai and Frontera Grill's Rick Bayless. All this follows the failed Lions Gate's Iron Chef USA on UPN which featured chefs Todd English (described in Super Chef on pp. 112-114), Alessandro Stratta, Jean Francois Meteigner, and Roy Yamaguchi, pitted against the likes of Kerry Simon and Marcus Samuelsson. The Food Network re-ran Iron Chef USA in Summer 2003 but must have decided they wanted more control, perhaps in both ownership and quality. Otherwise, it seems only Todd made out well from Iron Chef USA: it helped land him an Olives restaurant in Tokyo (see Super Chef, p. 126). There is something sad in seeing Iron Chef mutate from Japanese to American (English). Even the dubbing of the original was fun -- I never stopped thinking of the fight scene in Wayne's World 2, like an audiovisual food memory that augmented each moment. Alton Brown is certainly an improvement over William Shatner(!), but can the new American version ever maintain or put a new twist on the Japanese original? Let's not forget, too, that Todd English has his own Reality TV show coming up next year on PBS (see "Todd English: American Chef Gone Wild"). Hmmm... Iron Chef USA vs American Chef. The battle continues. Stay tuned.