The GIANTS, of course. Be warned, I pick them every year and have only been right 3 times.
Chef Guarnaschelli, you will not be the Next Iron Chef. Those words were ambrosia for my ears. I especially liked that she didn’t make it past the first round. She was the only chef to never have competed in a sudden death cook-off.
I think Chef Zakarian will win overall, but this is not a slam dunk. Chef Faulkner really showed she can compete with anybody.
Wooooot!!!
Darn right, the Giants win the Superbowl every year… admittedly most years it’s in alternate parallel universes but it still counts!
So that was the TNIS jumping the shark moment, right? Very awkward and stupid product placement in the sudden death cook-off. Crackers, really? And whoring your own wine label? Ugh.
Last week was Kikkoman. These shows cost money to make, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t watch any commercials. I don’t like product placements, but I understand that without them, we get no show.
Those advertisements won’t sell for much once they destroy their franchise. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll watch The Food Network if it’s just turning pre-made crap into food. It’s not informative unless I get snowed in for a week and only have ponzu, crackers, and breadcrumbs in the pantry. It’s also not particularly entertaining.
Many of the chefs stress* farm-to-table* sensibilities, but then we have them using stuff that is about as far away from that as you can get. If they want to do product placement let it be for appliances or kitchen accessories. Or have the California Seafood Council sponsor it.
Have you watched Top Chef? There’s product placement in every episode.
And it annoys the hell out of me.
My wife and I loved this episode! We were rooting for Faulkner since Chuck Hughes was eliminated, and she has not disappointed.
We have really enjoyed watching this series; it has been fast-paced, pretty well-edited, and some of the twists to the challenges have been both diabolical, and incredibly interesting.
The prices of the foods in their area of the Hamptons were absolutely stunning. Twelve dollars for a pound of butter??? 13 bucks for a jug of vinegar??? No freakin’ wonder the place is so exclusive! I wonder how the average-joe locals who live and work there survive!
To me, it is just mind-boggling that the chefs are doing all that shopping, on a budget, making 24 dishes of premium cuisine, exquisitely presented, on their own, in restricted time. Their focus is absolutely tremendous; I can’t imagine a one of them not being exhausted by the time the adrenalin wore off. Stuff like this almost catapults what they are doing into the arena of athletics.
Awesome show! Let’s go Faulkner!
No one likes advertising, but it is what pays for the shows. And when people tune them out or fast forward thru them, the advertisers are stuck finding new ways to get bang for the buck. Alton has the unenviable job of hawking the products. No one else ever mentioned the brands names.
They certainly mentioned the product names over and over: “This dish showed off the buttery nature of the *Deluxe Cardboard Natural Cracker ™ *”.
I realize they need to make money, but if it’s a show about great chefs making great food you can’t give them crap to work with. There are lots of product placements you could do without completely compromising the show. The Whole Food shopping trips are a good fit and I know that Iron Chef has used specific ingredients like Canadian lobster that were obviously a product placement. Hawking Food Network cook books and the like is fine as well, but boxed crackers from Keebler is just disgraceful. The Iron Chef and Alton Brown are their flagships, cheapen them and you might as well do “The Bachelor Cooks for Jersey Shore On Survival”.
I don’t see the problem with their use of the brand-name products.
The secret ingredients could easily have been “generic who=knows-where-in-the-world-it-comes-from wine” and “non-descript crackers”.
They still need to prepare the food.
Yeah, the times when they have to tip-toe around brand names are probably even more annoying (like during the movie concession episode).
I liked this episode a lot. Things are getting down to the finals and so we see some harder challenges and more food requirements.
You know, at the beginning of this show, I was really rooting against the 3 Chopped judges, but as I watched them in non-judging roles, I hate to sound like a cliche, but they seemed a lot more human. I’m not as put off by Zakarian’s perceived arrogance anymore, he just seems supremely confident and I think he’s had to fight off more people in the cook-off than anyone so far. He’s proven himself. His dishes are truly inspired and great, I don’t think I would mind seeing him as an Iron Chef
Faulkner surprised me too, as I had the same preconceived notion that a pastry chef couldn’t match up with the others but I’ve been proved wrong. Plus, with Cat Cora not on the show anymore, maybe I wouldn’t mind seeing her on the show as the token female chef
I’m actually a little disappointed that Alex didn’t get a cook-off. Her dishes were hit-and-miss during the challenges, but I would have liked to see her go one-on-one against someone. It almost seems unfair to me that she didn’t get a chance to redeem herself. I hope that was known to the competitors that they were going to eliminate the 4th place person just like that, because I think it would be grossly unfair if that was a secret
The finale just aired on the east coast. The next Iron Chef is…
Geoffrey Zakarian!
I have to say I liked both pretty equally going into the final, so I’m pleased. It would have been interesting to see how many votes each chef got from the judging panel, though. It seemed like a pretty close call so I don’t think it was a landslide.
I feel like they were playing up the suspense a bit, trying to come up with all the soundbites they could to make it seem close. But basically, it seemed like Zakarian’s dishes were all excellent, with only one judge disliking one, where Falkner’s dishes were more variable… maybe the best one slightly better than Zakarian’s on average, but several notably weaker (obviously still at an incredibly high standard by most scales).
Certainly I would have been surprised if Falkner had won, although I was definitely cheering for her.
Quite an entertaining show, overall.
This season was excellent. I liked seeing all of these chefs that I’ve watched on various shows compete against others who are as good or better than they are. I’m definitely not discounting Faulkner anymore as she really impressed.
I have to admit that I began the season not like Zakarian, but ended up rooting for him to win. He really knows his stuff. I’ve always felt he seemed like the elder statesman in any Chopped judges trio and now that belief seems to have been vindicated. I still think he’s a bit arrogant, but now I have to admit that its deserved. I think he’ll make a fine addition to the Iron Chef lineup and maybe his smugness will be mitigated by having to be judged from now on instead of judging others. Now instead of criticizing chefs for not doing well enough on their salads, he will have actors with no background in food tell him his stuff is too salty for them or something. I’m just imagining he’s probably rolling his eyes at them in his mind but it’s good to be able to make food for the masses once in a while
I hope they throw some really weird ingredients to him and let him demonstrate what he can do with them. Iron Chef frequently has exotic stuff that most of us would never be able to get. I’m dying to see Zakarian try making meals out of ingredients he has no familiarity with, though those are probably few and far between
Maybe it’s because I’m a Guarnaschelli fanboy, but I think I admire her abilities more after the show.
She tied Chiarello for third with practically no self confidence that the editing showed us. From day one she was sounding like she was in over her head (or so the editing would have us believe) and even when Geoffrey chose her as the extra chef, she still never sounded like she had any belief in her abilities.
So with that in mind, she was working based purely on skill with low self confidence possibly even dragging her down, if not at least being neutral. Imagine if she had confidence in her abilities (but not arrogance) and she actually dared to try things she knew would be difficult but awesome? Her skill more than likely would have pulled through but she never gave herself the chance.
Or maybe I’m just a fanboy and am making things up, always a possibility.
I gotta admit, though, as much as I have come to admire Geoffrey Zakarian, what that man did to those gorgeous rib eye steaks was a sacrilege!
~VOW
I knew almost nothing about Mr. Zakarian prior to this show. I just knew him from chopped and found him to be arrogant, but I just love him now. I’m glad he won and I am looking forward to watching him on the show. I have a new respect for Alex too. I will watch Chopped differently now.
I have to admit, I really thought Falkner was going to win just because they might want a female on the show. I’m glad I was wrong.