Up and coming chef Ben Sargent had just been given his very own half hour Food Network TV show--all about him and chowder, his specialty. With the sun barely up one morning in May, cameras followed him around the Fulton Fish Market. He stocked up on monkfish, live eels, and giant clams that looked like tubular aliens. The work was scrutinizing, but the last day on camera promised to be easy: a Brooklyn waterfront party where he cooked and his friends gnoshed. Like the cameras weren't even there.

The day arrived. Sargent happily and somewhat drunkenly prepared his chowder. He looked up, and Bobby Flay stood in the audience--the fiery haired Iron Chef, no less. Suddenly, Flay was on him, shaking his hand and challenging him to a chowder cook-off, right then and there.

This wasn't Sargent's show at all. This was Food Network's Throwdown with Bobby Flay and he'd just been had.

"Bobby Flay was unbelievably intimidating," he recalls. "I saw him in the audience, and I panicked."

Throwdown pits Flay against cooks around the country who specialize in anything from wedding cakes to pizza. It premiered Thursday July 13th with the chowder episode, a dish that Sargent's cooked since childhood.

"Four or five years old, I watched my grandfather make chowder in Cape Cod over our seriously outdated gas stove back in the day," says Sargent. "As time went on, I got a little more serious and watched a little more carefully."

According to Sargent, the word "chowder" has its roots in the word cauldron and originally referred to any number of ingredients you stuck in a pot and cooked for an extended period of time, combining the flavors. Perhaps the most well known American variation is New England clam: thick, milky white, and brimming with tender mollusks. Lesser known but still popular is the brazen red tomato based Manhattan clam chowder. The chowder Sargent served on the show was Bahamian monkfish. Originally, it was a non milk based conch chowder, but Sargent fiddled around with it, threw in milk, and replaced the conch with eel and monkfish.

The eels themselves presented their own ordeal the day of the chowder party.

"I was supposed to have eels that had been refrigerated the night before," says Sargent. "That slows them down. You can cut off their heads in front of an audience, because they're not so spastic."

Unfortunately, Sargent's eels ended up being frozen instead of refrigerated, so the next morning they were rock hard. As a quick fix, he threw them into the microwave.

"Their heads exploded," he says.

Obviously, obliterated eels couldn't be on national G rated television. The eels featured on Throwdown were fresh from the market, unrefrigerated, and lively as all hell. Food Network wisely chose to cut out the footage of Sargent chopping off their heads and skinning them alive. Even decapitated and peeled of their skins, they still flung themselves around the cutting board during fileting.

Off-camera, Sargent calls Bobby Flay a sweetheart; when asked if the competition was fair, he haltingly replies:

"It was fair in that we...no, it wasn't fair."

Sargent admits he has years of chowder cooking under his belt but quickly points out that Bobby Flay came in knowing there would be a competition while he didn't. The production company assured Sargent that the event would be a party, so he showed up with "two dull sh-tty ass knives," swigged a few beers, and started to prep his stock right there on the spot. Meanwhile, Flay had been preparing for days and had all the resources that the Food Network could provide him.

"He's got all his soux chefs," says Sargent. "Two women working under him in their black chef's coats with the little Food Network logo on them. They looked so intimidating. His stocks were prepared in containers. He comes with 100 brand new glistening Japanese prep knives. He had his automatic chowder mixer. I'm sitting there, mixing raw potatoes, dealing with our lack of high flame."

Throughout the cook-off, Sargent actually ran over to Flay's table a number of times and borrowed equipment. He initially believed the judging would go to public opinion, so by the time he realized one woman from Pearl Oyster Bar would decide the winner, he had already given all of his good chowder away to the audience.

"I had none of my good chowder left," says Sargent. "I had the dregs on the bottom which was too thick. I gave her something stewier, which was her major complaint about my chowder. Had I known I would have given her something from the middle of the pot."

In the end, Flay won. Sargent tasted the winning chowder and admits that, while it was good, he was too nervous to remember now what it tasted like. (Interview by Yukari Rymar)

For a recap of this week's throwdown with steaks, click here.