The silliest cookery show ever lands in UK
Joe Warwick
ANYONE hoping or fearing a decline in the glut of cookery inspired TV need not worry/get excited. Because despite the surfeit of cooking competition formats already on the box from Come Dine with Me via The Great British Menu to the various bits of the Masterchef franchise, another is about to join them in the form of Iron Chef. Filming begins in February with the show scheduled for broadcast on Channel 4 later in 2010.
It’s arrival in the UK follows the success of the format in the US where 'Iron Chef America' has proved a hit since it first appeared in November 2008, it's since been made into a video game and earlier this month even featured the appearance of Michelle Obama in a special episode that was filmed partly at the White House.
The US version was itself based on the completely ridiculous and accordingly cult Japanese original that, dreamt up by Fuji Television, ran on Japanese television from 1993 to 1999.
Iron Chef combined Japanese culinary fetishism with a tacky game show format and served it up with a side order of eccentric fantasy. Hosted by the flamboyant Chairman Kaga, who at the top of each show a voiceover informs the audience has "realised his dream in a form never seen before" by constructing a cooking arena in his castle - bear with me here - a 'kitchen stadium' where visiting chefs from around the world competed against his crack brigade resident chefs in gladiatorial kitchen combat over a particular themed ingredient.
From the theatrically camp costumes to Kaga's cry of "Allez cuisine" and judging cameos from Joël Robuchon and Jackie Chan - Iron Chef - to Western eyes anyway - seemed like a LSD-fuelled format.
Things only got weirder when it later turned up on American and British cable TV with an English voiceover that attempted to translate the untranslatable in the style of low budget 70’s kung-fu movie.
The British production company are apparently messing further with the format by opening it up to amateur cooks - both the previous versions only feature professional cooks - but whatever they do they’ll be hard pressed to beat the jaw-dropping, off-kilter, surreal silliness of the Japanese original.
The 90s revival begins: the Zetter finally fesses up
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Rumours of Bruno Loubet's arrival at The Zetter hotel in Clerkenwell have been circulating since the chef's return from Australia in 2009. Loubet was a star on the London restaurant scene in 90s, notably at his own restaurant Bistrot Bruno, which sat on the Soho site now occupied by the Michelin-starred Arbutus, and L'Odéon, at the Regent Street site that currently houses the pan-Asian, Cocoon. Loubet assisted Pierre Koffmann in the kitchen at his oversubscribed Selfridges pop-up last year after returning to London last summer with his family following eight years down under cooking at Bruno's Tables and Baguette in Brisbane, and Berardo's in Noosa on the Sunsine Coast. Bistrot Bruno Loubet will launch in February 2010 on the site currently operating as The Zetter Restaurant and will continue to be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week with an 85-seat dining room, lounge area and, come the warmer months, al fresco seating overlooking St John's Square. |
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Last stop, St. Alban
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Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, the accomplished duo who began Caprice Holdings and own Rex Restaurants Associates that runs the Wolseley, have closed their other London restaurant, the modern Italian, St Alban, after three years. Launched with Francesco Mazzei (now of L'Anima) as head chef, the restaurant held its last service at lunchtime on Christmas Eve 2009. The restaurant's closure comes as they prepare to start work on a trio of new London projects with a proposed sequel to the Wolseley at the theatre museum in Covent Garden and a hotel in a yet-be-confirmed Mayfair property conversion. They have also signed on a site at the summit of 'The Pinnacle' part of the yet-to-be-built Bishopsgate Tower development in the City of London that is currently mooted for completion in 2012. |
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