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.

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.