A few nights ago I downloaded and watched 'Iron Chef America' which is a culinary competition pitting one resident 'iron chef' against a visiting challenger chef. I was immediately struck by two features of the show. Firstly, it's kind of designed a long the lines of a mild WWF format minus the aggression with a bit of Samurai thrown in due to the Japanese origin of the host. But it is oh so corny for that reason - I'm not sure whether this is actually done 'tongue in cheek' or if Americans actually take it seriously. To me it's pure comedy.
Secondly, I was very surprised to see that the food being produced was like the style in Europe circa mid to late 1990's - very fussy and involving lots of complicated sauces with a huge range of tastes going on in each dish. Europe seems to have moved on to much simpler food cooked with all the best ingredients but losing this pretentious style. Gordon Ramsay would have hit the roof had he seen this lot at work.
Anyway, despite laughing and ridiculing it most of the way through, I have found that I'm now quite addicted to the show and have subsequently watched 3 more. Is it because these shows are just easy viewing requiring no mental activity at all that they are so popular? Reality TV, makeovers, house renovations, etc, etc, are all cheap TV and really absolute crap but for some reason they pull in the ratings and we love them!
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