"TheNextIronChef" news and stories

Last night, we entered a world of pain on "The Next Iron Chef" -- quite literally. With only three chefs left in the competition, we no longer had to rely on the show's Ritalin-addicted cameramen or the barked commands of stoic "Chairman" Marc Dacascos to make us anxious. The misty, unforgiving environs of Tokyo seemed to be doing a fine job all on their own.

Never mind Jose Garces being shouted at by the fishmongers at the legendary Tsukiji fish market, or the now openly evil Jehangir Mehta announcing, "I'm not bothered by bringing other people down to make myself look better." We knew there was pain in the air last night from the very first, utterly geeky "Reservoir Dogs"-style shot of the three chefs walking down a rain-slicked street to get their latest assignment from Dacascos and host Alton Brown. We wondered: Why are they walking so slowly? And why is Seamus Mullen limping along in what appears to be utter agony?

Leave it to "TNIC" editors to have downplayed Mullen's ongoing struggle with rheumatoid arthritis until this late in the game. Whether or not the affliction had hindered him in previous episodes, we're not sure, but last night, attempting to run around both the market and the kitchen for several hours on end, it was clear he was suffering. Add to that the indignity of Mehta leaving the forever-temperamental ice-cream machine (when will you guys throw in the towel on that thing?!) in strategic shambles, and the damning comment of "Have you ever cooked rice?" from guest judge Dr. Hattori, and Mullen was having one of those Very Bad Days we all dread.

But more about that later. The challenge was to cook a five-course kaiseki -- a very formal meal composed of local, seasonal ingredients -- that reflected their own "integrity" as a chef. For Mehta this meant buying half of the food in the market and littering his serving trays with edible flowers ("I'm a happy person! I like beauty!"). Mullen may have dubbed it all "smoke and mirrors," but Mehta still managed to produce a fresh clam salad with chili flower that was a standout of the evening.

It took a transpacific flight, but finally last night, "The Next Iron Chef" deviated from its status as a "Top Chef" also-ran and finally started getting ... weird. Or maybe it was just the goofy opening montage of our four remaining cheftestants standing in the busy rain-slicked streets of Tokyo, crossing their arms in slo-mo and acting all alpha-dog dominant.

In any event, the show is finally getting down to its high-stakes, high-drama Japanese roots after an extended period of trumped-up, low-stakes challenges in Los Angeles. Our trio of alternately grumpy and spunky judges have come along for the ride, and eyebrow-cocking "Chairman" Marc Dacascos is no longer beamed in via satellite to bark oblique commands to the chefs -- now he can do so in person!

This week's mission was the pursuit of umami, the Japanese concept of a so-called fifth flavor -- something beyond savory -- that seems to be everywhere these days. The word was mentioned about a zillion times in the course of last night's episode, and -- surprise! -- it just happens to be the current marketing catchphrase of "TNIC" sponsor Kikkoman, whose umpteen varieties of soy sauce were littered around the challenge kitchen. The umami theme also allowed host Alton Brown a moment to do what he does best: Explain all the geeky details of how soy sauce is made.

That food chemistry lesson out of the way, it was up to our remaining pro chefs to get down to the flavor at hand, a challenge made all the more confusing in the Hattori Nutrition College kitchen, replete with weird can openers, stoves operating in celcius and ice cream makers that seemed to deep-freeze their wares to a glacier-like consistency. Asked to fill five spots of a bento box each with a different rice-based dish, the foursome didn't need to engage in the usual reality-show sabotage -- the people who arranged the kitchen seemed to do that for them.

At the mid-point of any reality show -- let alone one involving a bunch of ambitious, successful, mostly alpha-male chefs -- a clear villain emerges. And the way things have shaken out on "The Next Iron Chef," we're left with a strange mix: Two are the nicest chefs you could imagine (Jose Garces, Roberto Trevino), two are boy- and girl-next-door types (Seamus Mullen, Amanda Freitag, respectively), and two are the meanest, cockiest, backstabbing-est bastards the Food Network casting director could hope to find (Nate Appleman, Jehangir Mehta).

Picking from among the nice ones is hard -- Garces and Freitag are constantly offering up help to the others and downplaying their talent -- but the heart of banal evil of "TNIC" is a little easier to pin down. Sure, former A16 and soon-to-be Pulino's chef Appleman is your average aggressive, tatted-up, overly confident young chef. And yes, his quote during last night's Indian-themed "pressure" challenge was enough to make us hurl: "I'm a white boy who never cooked Indian before and I just cooked 5 dishes -- I think I've pretty much won this."

But if it's the devious grin, the glint of sabotage, the air of smug condescension you're looking for, there can only be one choice: Mehta. We're sure Graffiti's wunderkind is, as its Web site puts it, "truly a nice guy." But if you've been watching the way "TNIC" editors slice-and-dice Mehta's reaction shots -- not to mention his own proclivity for undermining his co-contestants by hoarding ingredients and gadgets whether he needs them or not -- he's the leading candidate to be the show's mustache-twirling bad guy. And judging by the voting, he'll continue to be.

Let us pause now to reflect upon Jeffrey Steingarten, award-winning writer, fearless gastronomist and utterly irascible judge of "The Next Iron Chef." Every cooking competition show needs its Simon Cowell, after all, a grumpy, hard-to-please, perpetually underwhelmed quipster whose general lack of enthusiasm makes for great, nasty sound bites. But Steingarten is in another class entirely: He's so disaffected, it's hard to tell if he's got a pulse half of the time.

Week after week, Steingarten regards the Iron Chef hopefuls in the same way a crusty professor might deal with a snot-nosed student who happened to stop by his office outside of office hours. The man may certainly have his cheerful side, but by now we've gotten the feeling that every week, the "TNIC" editors decide to save up and splice together all of his best "You got me out of bed for this?" looks, and parse them out over the course of the last 15 minutes of each show.

When in doubt, they zoom in on one of his particularly befuddled stares -- no doubt there are plenty to choose from -- and try to give it some sort of significance, as if the man can't believe what he's hearing. You imagine that a Steingarten comment like "my flan is a little curdled" was probably delivered politely, gingerly to chef Jose Garces -- but when the tribal drums of failure are added to the soundtrack, man, does it take on a sting.

What was that on the Food Network Sunday night, you ask? Thudding sound effects, suspenseful music, extreme shaky-cam cinematography -- it had to be one of the "Bourne" movies, right? The opening of a scene from "Saving Private Ryan"? A straight-to-video "Mission: Impossible" sequel?

No, that trumped-up spectacle you witnessed was not the next John Woo movie -- it was, of course, the semi-celebrity chef competition "The Next Iron Chef." It's unlikely that anything can challenge Bravo's "Top Chef" as the premiere American cheftestant show, but as an old ad once put it, being No. 2 means you just try harder.

And trying really, really hard is what "The Next Iron Chef" is all about. In fact, all the music, fancy editing and bright lights are beginning to take their toll: Even the eight remaining chefs can't muster up quite that much energy. When your losing chef can utterly shrug off his failure -- something along the lines of "even great chefs have bad days; at least I have two great restaurants and my lovely family to go home to," yadda yadda yadda -- you know you've got a low-stakes kind of show. It's not as if these folks are going to go back to toiling in obscurity, with the added insult of "reality show failure" being tattooed on their foreheads.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. "The Next Iron Chef" has its pleasures, even if they're in a watered-down, "Top Chef" kind of way. Any episode that sings the praises of Los Angeles' myriad strip-mall Asian restaurants can't be all bad, especially when the four chosen for the show are all authentically, unequivocally tasty. Even the blatant product placement of the overexposed-but-still-delectable Kogi Korean-taco truck didn't bother us -- in fact, the mere thought of their short rib tacos gave us the Pavlovian impulse to check their Twitter posts to see if they were nearby.