Chef Ned Bell cooks during the taping of Iron Chef Canada.geoff george
Yes, the food was served hot. No, I didn’t keep the outfit. And sorry to disappoint for being too nice, but I really was on my best behaviour.
There is no meanness or snark in the new Iron Chef Canada, which premiered last month on Food Network Canada. And after watching the second episode in which I appeared as a guest judge – Battle Stone Fruit, pitting Iron Chef Rob Feenie against challenger Ned Bell – I am even more convinced that the respectful tone is appropriate. In keeping with the change from the usual acerbic tone of TV shows, I bit my tongue when necessary.
There are so many culinary competitions on television today, an entire generation has grown up under the illusion that any moderately talented home baker or wisecracking line cook can leapfrog years of hard work and passionate dedication with a few lucky quickfire challenges and a compelling backstory.
The original Iron Chef from Japan was a different beast entirely. While hilariously campy and over-the-top – especially the dubbed versions that North Americans fell in love with in the late nineties – there was nobility in the battle, reverence for the ingredients and a serious emphasis on technique and tradition.
Alexandra Gill was joined on the judge panel by Jonathan Cheung, the owner of Montreal’s Appetite for Books, and cookbook author Tara O’Brady.GEOFF GEORGE
Iron Chef Canada tries to stay true to the spirit of the original show and the early U.S. editions. While some viewers might be caught off guard and others will quibble over the choice of contestants or technicalities, this series truly is an unparalleled opportunity for showcasing the amazing cooking that happens day after day in elite kitchens across the country.
Remember that Canada does not have a strong tradition of high-level culinary competition – the federal government doesn’t even support our contenders for the Bocuse d’Or, a biennial world chef championship that stokes a frenzy of excitement and deep-pocketed sponsorship in most other participating countries.
So when I think back to Iron Chef Canada’s grandiose Kitchen Stadium – the smoke, the spotlights, the altar of apricots and cherries, the flying sweat, the melting makeup and the woodsy scent of binchotan charcoal swirling through the air – I still can’t believe how fortunate I was to take part.
Iron Chef Rob Feenie faces challenger and fellow west coaster chef Ned Bell.geoff george
Everything happened so fast. One day I received an e-mail out the blue from a producer at Proper Television, a few weeks later I was in Toronto for the shoot. In the meantime, I panicked about what to wear. I sent a grovelling request to Greta Constantine – a Toronto-based fashion designer who dresses Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, among others – fully expecting to be ignored. To my astonishment, Greta Constantine senior manager Jesse Greene replied within minutes, explaining that he was coming to Vancouver, had just been reading my review of Royal Dinette and would be pleased to lend me some dresses. Good omen.
On a sweltering day in July, I rolled up to the production studio in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, still none the wiser as to who would be competing or any other details. When I discovered that Rob Feenie was the Iron Chef, I thought “Yes! I know his cooking well.” Years ago, Mr. Bell, now Ocean Wise chef for the Vancouver Aquarium, was Mr. Feenie’s sous chef at Lumière, and before that, his culinary student. Wow, this was going to be an epic West Coast showdown.
The Canadian food community is a small world. My fellow judges were Jonathan Cheung, the owner of Montreal’s Appetite for Books, who is also from Vancouver, and cookbook author Tara O’Brady, who also writes for The Globe and Mail.
After flexing our food-talking muscles in the green room and getting our hair touched up, we were whisked downstairs to the dark and cavernous Kitchen Stadium to meet the Chairman, played by Jai West. I know some say he was too flamboyant with his arched eyebrow and pink tuxedo, but I thought he was utterly charming and true to the original character.
A dish served on Episode 2 of Iron Chef Canada.GEOFF GEORGE
During the cooking segment, which was as intense as it looks on television and taped in real time, we couldn’t hear any of the conversations on the floor.
The judging took longer, but was just as rapidly paced. Over the years, I have written hundreds of thousands (probably close to a million) words about food, but I have never actually talked that much about food in a single sitting. Afterward, I couldn’t even remember half of what was said, but having now seen the episode, I realize that it is definitely time to retire the word “beautiful” from my vocabulary.
It was such a pleasure to taste Mr. Feenie’s classic fine-dining cuisine again. His sablefish, foie gras, hamachi sashimi – these were variations on dishes that inspired me to start writing about food 18 years ago and were just as delicious as I remembered.
Mr. Bell (spoiler alert, he didn’t win) did an extremely admirable job of sticking to his convictions and cooking with the type of ingredients he so passionately believes in – sustainable seafood, plant-based and nutrient-dense.
It’s hard to compare luxuriant foie gras with healthy almond cream and we struggled with that. But once upon a time, there was another panel of Iron Chef judges in Japan who were flummoxed by a talented young chef named Masaharu Morimoto, who had presented them with potato chips, sesame-oil-sizzled sashimi and other new traditions from America. He didn’t win that contest, but it didn’t hold him back.
That’s the beauty of Iron Chef Canada – it’s history in the making.
Alexandra Gill