Until tonight. Now you went and blew it sky high.
I have been aware of the Iron Chef for years. I have never held it in much regard. The reasons are rather complex. Let me tell you about it.
First, if you have judges making a decision about who wins and loses, you don't have a sport. Yep, that's right. I said you don't have any kind of objective legitimate outcome the second subjective human values and decisions come into play. Synchronized swimming is not a sport. Ball Room Dancing is not a sport. Gymnastics is not a sport. When the judges call the winner, boxing is not a sport either.
Second, food is not a competitive thing. It is a life-support thing. It is more comparable to medicine than sport. Can you imagine Iron Surgeon America? Today's guest surgeon is Dr. Evan Bachner from West Hills California, and he will be challenging Iron Surgeon Dr. James R. Andrews of Alabama. Now for tonight's secret orthopedic malady: Knee Replacement surgery! The two contestants will each have 60 minutes to anesthetize their patients and complete the knee replacement surgery. Our special guest celebrity judges will assess their work at the end of the 60 minutes according to our scoring system.
For all the same reasons Iron Surgeon America would be a preposterous show, I think Iron Chef is largely a preposterous concept.
In any case, I was beginning to enjoy the show. Getting four or five ideas for how to use an ingredient, like yogurt, is not a bad thing. I also have begun to like Iron Chef Michael Symon. I love the stuff he cooks. I love the crass, coarse, mildly profane jesting manner he has. In short, he is just exactly my type of guy. He is anti-effete, anti-elitist, anti-artsy-fartsy. Did I mention that Michael Symon is the winning-est chef in the history of Iron Chef America?
So, fast forward to tonight. Iron Chef Michael Symon takes on the lovely and talented Dominique Crenn. Now this was an interesting battle. Although I have never seen her before, I can tell you that Ms. Crenn is exactly my cup of tea. I felt bad for her. She was challenging the winning-est Iron Chef in the house. It did not look good for her.
The battle raged on as I expected. Michael Symon made a bunch of delicious things that could easily be identified as mouth-watering food. Not even Alton Brown had a clue as to what Dominique Crenn was making. He even said as much. It is on the videotape. Check it out.
I felt bad for the lovely French Morena. She obviously had brought a knife to a gun fight, and Symon was going to gun her down. By 30 minutes into the show, I knew Symon was 30 points out in front of her, and it was going to be a 360 rotational Godzilla press-slam.
As we came down to the judgement, I was absolutely confident of Symon's victory. I felt bad for the lovely lady. I wanted her phone number so I could take her out on a consolation date.
Are you ready for the shocker? Crenn defeats Symon 53-44. WHHHHHAAAAATTTT???? NOOOOOOO! IMPOSIBLE!
The autopsy report indicated that Crenn defeated Symon primarily based on plating and originality. She beat him 14-10 in each of these two categories.
Folks, this is the very embodiment of everything that is wrong with the entire Iron Chef concept. Bizarre-O plating schemes so weird you would mistake them modern art masterpieces. Dishes that cannot be recognized as food. Effete bullshit trumps flavor.
It is time for you bastards to come clean: You know you have no desire to eat food that looks like that. You know full-well you could not identify what you were looking at. You don't cook like that at home, and you would never order that sort of tripe in a restaurant. Why then do you hand over a victory based on such a thing?
This is absolutely preposterous! I want to go officially on the record that I am bitterly protesting this outcome. Symon was absolutely robbed! This is a travesty and miscarriage of justice!
This proves that food critics are crazy and not to be trusted. They need to go on top of a mountain, fast, pray, and seek deliverance from the daemons that enchain them. Food critics ain't no damn good to God or this country. If we are ever to have law and order in the West, the first thing we have to do is round up all food critics and shoot 'em down like dogs.
