Today Show Emulates Iron Chef America

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Last week, NBC's The Today Show ran its own version of a Reality TV cooking show a la the Food Network's Iron Chef America. On one side were three of Food & Wine's latest best new chefs: Tony Maws of Craigie Street Bistrot (Cambridge, MA) Shea Gallante of Cru (New York) Seth Bixby Daugherty of Cosmos (Minneapolis) On the other side were three more established chefs (two of whom were profiled in Super Chef: Todd English of the Olives Group (Boston) Tom Colicchio of FoodCraft LLC (New York) Cornelius Gallagher of Oceana (New York) As with Iron Chef, Iron Chef USA, and now Iron Chef America, both teams cooked with the same set of ingredients and tools, while Today Show co-host Matt Lauer supervised them during their hour of preparation. Interestingly, the newcomers beat the established guys -- which The Boston Globe found surprising, but not me. After all, can you image Todd and Tom on the same side of anything culinary? Todd is Mr. Complexity; Tom is Mr. Simplicity. All they could do together would be to argue -- or simply cancel each other out. That would leave Cornelius outnumbered, three to one. Previous articles: Cat Cora Wins on Iron Chef America Anita Lo Defeats Mario Batali on Iron Chef America Cat Cora, Anita Lo: Sexing Up Iron Chef America Iron Chef Pizza Wars: Batali vs. Puck Bobby Flay: Married and Motivated Ming Tsai TV Cat Cora: Iron Chef America's First Lady Roberto Trevino: Viva Aguaviva Nancy Silverton and Mario Batali's Mozza Iron Chef America: Running on Empty World AIDS Day II: Iron Chef Cat Cora More Reality TV Chefs (Or Less)? Real TV Cooking? Kitchen Confidential a la Sex and the City Molto Mario Massacres Mahi Iron Chef: America vs. USA --> back to superchefblog