Midnight Musings

Your Iron Chefs!


I love this show. It makes the people around me seem more normal. A Japanese millionaire, played by a man who dresses like Elvis, acts like William Shatner and sounds like a kung-fu movie, has his stable of top Japanese chefs of different cooking styles and finds a "challenger" with a famous reputation to "battle" one of them in his "Kitchen Stadium." The theme song is the theme to the American movie, "Backdraft." Honest. Two grown men, all up-in-arms over cooking up a better menu using the mystery "theme ingredient" according to three judges, sometimes none of whom seem to have any qualifications whatever for the position. Usually, it's a former government official, an actor and a psychic. Yes, a psychic. She never seems to know what to expect, though, so she's not a very good one. I didn't know Japan held psychics in such high esteem. Or maybe it's just the bad ones. One woman, an actress, was so thin I thought she should be disqualified on the grounds that she didn't appear to ever have put any food into her mouth. And they complain if the food is too foreign. I love that when the challenger is an Italian chef. Give me Italian food, please, but know that I won't like it if it's too Italian. These are the same people who get excited if the dish features internal organs or roe of any kind.

The chefs have a dream pantry and every amenity at their disposal except time: they must complete their dishes in one hour. Their imaginations run from the sublime (perfectly roasted duck sandwiched between homemade focaccia and portobellos) to the ridiculous (vanilla ice cream topped with fried manta ray cracker). They have two assistants each, and invariably at the end when asked how the hour went, the response is, "It was very short." There are commentators as if it were a sporting event, and all the speakers are dubbed in English except Elvis-san, who is subtitled for some unexplained reason. And, if the Iron Chef wins, he almost always cries. It is truly bizarre and I have no idea why I hate to miss it.

'night.