'The Next Iron Chef' - Too Much Is Never Enough

Marc Dacascos. Photo: Food Network.

Not enough tension in your cooking competition shows? Do you find your blood pressure leveling out to near-normal readings during "Top Chef"? Do you wish that "Chopped" had more creepy smoke-machine fog piped into the set? Would judges' decisions be more exacting if only they were accompanied by loud, metallic wooshing sounds?

You're in luck. Last week brought the return of "The Next Iron Chef," one of the Food Network's variations on the legendary Japanese cook-off show, and with it a heaping helping of adrenalin-fueled, hacksaw-edited mania. After just two episodes, it's clear the show isn't going to give us a moment's peace, whether to pour ourselves a nice glass of sherry or grab our anti-anxiety meds -- or both, should it ever come to that.

For those keeping track, this is not "Iron Chef America," the cooking-in-front-of-a-stadium spectacle that's closest to the Japanese original. In a way, that makes it more interesting -- in place of mega-celebs like Mario Batali, you get a bevy of less over-exposed folks like New York's Jehangir Mehta, of Graffiti -- and also closer in structure to Bravo's ratings king, "Top Chef."

All Iron Chefs can be summarized by two overarching concepts: disgustingly weird ingredients and -- we hope -- intentionally hilarious hyperbole. For the latter, look no further than the second season premiere, in which our ten cheftestants are flown to Los Angeles (the nation's "melting pot" of cuisine, apparently) and introduced with all the fanfare of the first NASA astronauts in "The Right Stuff."

And that's not the half of it. "Iron Chef" isn't "Iron Chef" without "The Chairman," an announcer capable of riling up a sumo-wrestling crowd, and venerable Hawaiian actor Mark Dacascos more than fits the bill: "I've summoned you to the City of Angels, because you are the stars of the kitchen!" The Food Network's own lovable resident geek Alton Brown presides over the competition itself, administering both sympathy and sarcasm in equal doses.

Brown is prone to the folksy, "What'cha makin?" sort of commentary, but when it comes time to dole out the challenges, he spares nothing: "Duck's tongues! How lucky for you!" There are no dispassionate, Tom Colicchio-style observations here: Think Tim Gunn sensitivity crossed with Michael Kors bitchiness and you'll come closest to the tone set on "Next Iron Chef."

Meanwhile, the level of technique from the chefs plucked from their four-star stations is stunning -- that is, what you can catch of it in between whiplash-inducing camera movements. The first episode's "Fearlessness" challenge found just about every chef working far outside his or her comfort zone, from Mehta's aforementioned duck tongue to Nate Appleman's squeamishly accepted dare to cook with unhatched eggs, umbilical cords still attached.

We'll have to take chef Seamus Mullen's word on the olfactory offense of his assigned ingredient: "You couldn't discern the difference between dirty diapers and stinky tofu with your eyes closed." But his ability to use it in place of blue cheese in a stuffed, bacon-wrapped fig and in place of tripe in a Spanish stew made the judges' complaint that they wished they could "taste the funk" a little spurious.

In fact, the talent level is so uniformly high -- and judging so uniformly picky, largely due to resident grump Jeffrey Steingarten -- the chefs voted off so far have seemed not so much lacking in ingenuity as they are lacking in an extra set of hands. Eric Greenspan had the unenviable task of making grasshoppers presentable, and did so in a grasshopper-mint-chocolate salad, but it was his poorly cooked pork pairing that got him sacked. For last night's "reinterpretation" challenge, Holly Smith's deconstructed bouillabaisse was "twisted too far," to use her own words, although it seemed by no means a failure, producing a stellar aioli at the very least.

If you're looking for upstarts and water-cooler griping, then stick to "Top Chef." But when that season ends -- and if you're willing to risk a seizure or two -- then "Next Iron Chef" just might fit the bill on Sunday nights.