Alton Brown gives me hives. As the host of Cutthroat Kitchen, he smirkingly auctions off opportunities to sabotage competing chefs — like forcing someone to cook in a mini kitchen, wear a dog cone around the neck or work culinary magic in an overflowing ball pit.
Who needs that kind of pressure or that kind of smirk? Not someone who can’t keep their gluten-free spaghetti from blobbing up like Jabba the Hutt. But pro chefs? Let ‘em sweat.
So it’s with great giddiness that this less-than-amateur cook is PVR-ing Iron Chef Gauntlet, debuting Sunday on Food Network. Brown is the chairman in the newest addition to the franchise, based on the Japanese competition show Iron Chef and comprising six one-hour episodes.
This version sees seven hotshot chefs battle each other for a spot in the following week’s episode. In each instalment they take on a Chairman’s Challenge, with the lowest-scoring chef pitted against one chosen by the winner in a Secret Ingredient Showdown.
The last chef standing will gird their tenderloins for the final challenge: beating three legendary Iron Chefs — Bobby Flay, Masaharu Morimoto and Michael Symon — in rapid succession to become an Iron Chef as well.
Guest judges include Iron Chefs Geoffrey Zakarian, Jose Garces and Alex Guarnaschelli, and industry experts Ali Bouzari, Giada De Laurentiis and Ludo Lefebvre. The competition will be strictly based on a points system, like in the Japanese original.
“There’s no rigging, there’s no coercing — it is a closed, secret ballot and whatever happens, happens,” Brown told Forbes.
“In order for this to be authentic, we had to all face the fact that at the end of the day, there may not be a winner. And that, I find compelling. That was absolutely critical, because if a winner is predestined, or even the existence of a winner is predestined, the whole competition’s blown.”
Brown, who also guest-stars on the new Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World, hinted at what will score competing chefs points with him.
“I am very big on correct use of technique and application of technique,” he said. “I can forgive sloppy plating, but the absolute basic tenets of cuisine are what separates really good line cooks from poseurs or, as we call them in the trade, shoemakers: salting or temperature errors.”
The Japanese Iron Chef series originally aired in the ‘90s, finding its way to Food Network in a dubbed version that became a cult hit. A short-lived Iron Chef USA and Iron Chef America followed; a U.K. version and The Next Iron Chef thicken up the franchise’s reach.
Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show [Comedy Central]
Jordan Klepper, a correspondent on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, will take over the post-Daily Show time slot previously occupied by Stephen Colbert and Larry Wilmore. His series will debut on U.S. network Comedy Central this fall. It will likely air in Canada on Comedy Network, the one-time home of Colbert and Wilmore’s shows — The Colbert Report and The Nightly Show, respectively.
Klepper’s offering, however, won’t play like either spinoff.
“This isn’t about Jordan trying to create a character like Colbert’s character was,” Comedy Central president Kent Alterman told IndieWire.
“This is really about trying to play to Jordan’s strengths. He’s so quick and so smart … Even on the field pieces (on The Daily Show), there are times where he plays almost a clueless, arrogant liberal and other times he goes the opposite direction.”
Klepper joined The Daily Show in 2014, under then-host Jon Stewart. Samantha Bee, who was also a correspondent during Stewart’s tenure, now hosts the much-lauded Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, airing on TBS in the U.S. and Comedy Network in Canada.
