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I promise, I won’t screw it up for you – I accidentally found out who won (gotta hate the internet sometimes!) before I had a chance to see it – I won’t give it away.

It was a “traditional” Iron Chef battle for the final, with a great ingredient. None of the weirdness of the previous challenges, just get your ass in the kitchen and cook like a madman. A nice twist – they had the other 3 Iron Chefs do the judging – I’ll be perfectly honest, I was getting very sick of 2 the 3 other judges. (God help me if I ever become famous in the food world, I’ll have 2 enemies right off the bat.)

The guy I wanted to win – didn’t. Not that the winner isn’t a tremendous chef. Hell, either of them could do this – they wouldn’t have gotten this far otherwise!

But you can’t watch this for 6 weeks and not have a favorite by the end. And of course, I can’t help but lean towards someone whose food I’d be more likely to pick off a menu.

So, if you’ve not seen it yet – Food Network will be re-running it a couple more times this week – worth the time. I’ve really enjoyed this series, it’s great competition without the snark of a Hell’s Kitchen or Top Chef.

I’ve gotten through the first 2 episodes so far (TiVo is a tad backlogged) and enjoying it so far. Have to say when you compare it to something like Hell’s Kitchen, it’s very different – these are chefs who are already well-established and have developed a strong sense of self and cooking styles. While it is competitive, there is a much stronger sense of camraderie than I’ve seen in any other competition type show.

I loved the “Simplicity” challenge – the idea of being able to encapsulate your style in a single bite was very interesting. I guess I’d have to go with a single slurp.

I did NOT like the “Innovations” segment. The new equipment was cool, but I didn’t like the forced used of chemicals. I think you can be exceptionally innovative without going into the realm of the weird just for the sake of going there. And to be honest, I don’t recall any particular episode of Iron Chef where there was use of these types of things, so other than introducing them to the new equipment, I think the chemical additives were an unnecessary part of this competition. I really felt bad for the chefs that were struggling with it – figure you spend your whole career on working with fresh ingredients and keeping chemicals *out* of the food, this would definitely be hard to wrap your head around.

ETA: Can’t say I really much like the judges.

It’s somewhat gratifying to see Cat Cora burn something in kitchen stadium.

ETA:  I don’t dislike her or anything, it’s just nice to see the pros occasionally have an “oh shit” moment.

Took one more episode and I was full on hooked. Today Fox Reality is showing one of the other seasons and of course, TiVo is getting it all for me and I’ll be watching like an addict.

I’ll admit I was full on pissed when I realized last week that they were stretching the finale out into 2 episodes.

Can’t wait to see who wins it, though I will fully admit I am pulling for our hometown guy, Rock.

OK, never saw it the first time around, so I’m late to the party on this one.
Now, I absolutely LOVE Gordon Ramsay and really enjoyed The F Word, but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep up with this one given that I already want to punch all of the “contestants” in the face. (Pretty much why I don’t watch much in the way of contest type shows.)

ETA: My brother assures me that my initial reaction is completely normal.