We watched an Iron Chef America episode tonight which featured a citrus battle. One of the fruits provided was Buddha's fingers, which I'd never heard of before. This is one awesome-looking fruit! Thinking of buying a houseplant so we can try some ourselves...In passing, Iron Chef America is certainly several steps down from the awesome original Iron Chef program. Leaving apart their laughable selection of Cat Cora as an iron chef, here are some of their biggest missteps in translating the show for an American audience.
- Eliminating the significant back story at the start of each episode, which provides context for either the challenger, ingredient, or theme. This setup helped lend an epic sensibility to the conflict.
- Not having the challenger call out the Iron Chef of their choice. (This mistake was remedied after the initial Iron Chef America episodes.)
- Minimizing the actual conflict in the battle. In Iron Chef, there was often both conflict between the chefs and conflict with the unexpected and difficult secret ingredient.
- Forgetting that the most significant aspect of the conflict should be the chef's articulation of the secret ingredient.
- Not choosing challenging secret ingredients!
- Using horrible, horrible, horrible judges who are not competent to talk about food or are just plain distasteful.
- Melodrama, melodrama, melodrama! The melodrama of the original show made it great!
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