I was remiss in talking about Next Iron Chef last week.  I was trying to launch my NaNoWriMo idea; however, that seems to be heading down the tubes this week.  So to re-ignite my writing mojo, I thought about talking a little about Sunday night’s installment of NIC and maybe a little from week one.

The second installment had the nine surviving chefs heading off to San Diego and the home the Major League Baseball team, Padres, to do a little ball park cooking.

Honestly, the first challenge should’ve been who can look at Alton Brown and not laugh their ass off at his clothing choice for the day.  I say this with great affection, AB the gray plaid sport coat, yellow slacks, navy blue polo shirt and light blue pocket square just didn’t come together for me.

All giggles aside, the first challenge, to reinvent ballpark food seemed to be something fairly easy.  I mean, traditional ballpark food isn’t the best grub in town anyway so to elevate it wouldn’t take much. But either its been too long since I’ve been to game, or the offerings of the minor league team here are behind the times, or these chefs had no clue what ballpark food is because I didn’t understand most of their “reinventions.”

It was bad enough to hear the new judge utter the word “foodgasm” last week.  However this week’s word was deconstructed.  It seemed most of the chefs’ concept of reinvent a dish was to deconstruct everything.  I was beginning to think I was watching HGTV or DIY instead of Food Network with the number of times that word as bandied about. Ugh!

Through the unscrupulous use of the editing machine, AB became the week’s meanie of the hour when he criticized chef Michael Chiarello’s coddled egg for retaining the white.  During his live tweeting Alton pointed out Chef Chiarello was not even standing at the judging tables when he made the comment about the offending egg white.

I have to say Alton’s comment was neither overly mean or nasty or anything other than someone who is judging a very highly skilled group of chefs vying for an elite title expecting a skilled and talented chef like Michael Chiarello to preform at the top-notch level he should.  Separating an egg is basic technique.

If anyone wants to say AB was mean, nasty, cruel for pointing out this mistake, then what’s the point of having a judging panel?  What’s the point of having these chefs’ dishes evaluated?  Some times I wonder if people just take offense to anything and everything Alton says if it isn’t goofy and with a puppet.  Yes, he can be gruff and prickly at times.  But there was nothing wrong with his comment about the egg.

And speaking of judges…

Since I didn’t talk about the episode last week, I didn’t get a chance to discuss the judges.  Back again are Iron Chef Michael Symon (yay! I love Mike!) and Simon Majumdar.  While I readily admit that last year I thought Simon was the show’s resident meanie, I have changed my opinion of him. In the summer, right after NIC wrapped, AB tweeted with Simon a bit and I started following him.  I can tell you seeing his tweets, he’s nothing like the judge from last season.  I had a completely wrong impression of him.  In fact, he is one of the coolest food people around. Right up there with AB.  If you don’t follow him on Twitter, you should! He’s @SimonMajumdar.  The verdict is still out on Judy Joo, however.  That foodgasm comment from the first week made me cringe.

It was a shame to see Chef Robert Irvine go.  I’ve been watching Restaurant Impossible of late and enjoying it very much.  So when he came in at the bottom it was sad.  Especially given that Chef Geoffrey Zakarian was called down for not conforming to the rules of the Chairman’s Challenge. And I have to say, it was mighty, mighty generous of the judges to allow him to stay another week in spite of it.

On very interesting side note to the whole show this season is that Alton is tweeting along with the show airing on the East Coast.  Unfortunately, some morons complained about AB’s tweets and he has decided to punish us all but not tweeting until next Sunday.  Alton and Twitter just don’t seem to get along.

Whatever happens (apparently, AB broke his silence while I was in the process of writing this post!), happens but I hope he can find some happy medium with Twitter.