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White House Iron Chef Episode Was A Fraud!
Published on: January 12, 2010 – 4:36 pm by Jillian Madison 
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Remember last week’s overly-hyped Iron Chef episode that featured dishes supposedly made with fresh ingredients from the White House garden? As it turns out, the White House footage was filmed in October, but the actual episode wasn’t shot until a week later. And as a result, the Iron Chefs used STUNT DOUBLE VEGETABLES in the episode, and not the produce they had just picked from the Obama’s garden.
This incident wouldn’t have been a big deal, had only the Food Network fessed up instead of intentionally trying to deceive the public. According to Politics Daily:
Viewers were not explicitly told that the vegetables in “Kitchen Stadium” were not the ones they had seen the chefs harvest. Various participants in the show misled viewers with references to “using radishes from the White House garden” and other similar mentions. Except for the honey, no food on the show came from the White House.
So what became of the vegetables the chefs did pick that day? They were “donated to a local food kitchen,” according to the Obama camp.
Lisa Krueger, the food world’s least-favorite Food Network PR rep, chimed in with the following quote:
As we have told reporters who have covered this story from the beginning, due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the “Super Chef Battle” was not actually from the White House garden. The actual vegetables used were locally sourced, and the chefs were only allowed to use the types of produce that they had harvested from the garden themselves.
Perhaps Steve, a commenter on Politics Daily, said it best: “With a little more investigative research, you would probably find out that the selection of the winner was rigged too!”
Wow, a show about the White House garden, that didn’t even feature vegetables from the White House garden! Gee, thanks Food Network!
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I know everything on television is bullshit but this makes me mad. I really believed they were using vegetables from the White House garden. I feel like such a fool. OH THE HUMANITY
And this episode got them their highest rated night in network history? That’s pretty sad. The episode wasn’t even good.
The whole episode was rigged. From the vegetables to the winner. Lisa Krueger can bite my big one. What’s she gonna say? “You’re right, we’re all assholes and liars here. Carry on!”
To me this is no big revelation, because the whole Iron chef America show is a COMPLETE fraud. For example, the secret ingredient is NOT a secret. The contestant really does NOT choose the iron chef to compete against. The Chairmand is just an actor, not a nephew of the Chairman of the original Iron Chef. The chefs only need to complete one example of each dish, and then they have an additional 45 – 60 minutes after the time is up to complete 4 more examples of each. Etc… Etc…
Do you mean when the “Chairman” says “Tell me what inspired you about tonite’s secret ingredient” he really doesn’t mean it?
I think that Mark Dacascos (the Chairman) is a D List actor who really has no culinary training, has no culinary point of view, and probably doesn’t even like food all that much. I was most appalled when one one episode Mr. Dacascos refused to taste the dessert that one competitor created because he said he was “watching his waistline.” I couldn’t believe my ears! So IMHO the answer to your rhetorical question is ABSOLUTELY NO, he does not give the smallest crap what the “inspiration” was.
Well the original Chairman in Japan was just an actor as well. Don’t know if he had any special real-life culinary interests? Whatever…I still like the original show best.
I guess I would put those things in somewhat different categories–I doubt anyone actually believes, or cares whether, that the “chairman” is the nephew of the Japanese IC chairman; that’s just traditional showbiz puffery (the whole IC conceit is a degree of absurd self-seriousness) and doesn’t really go to the heart of the show.
I’ve also always assumed that the competitor doesn’t really chose the Iron Chef s/he wants to compete against, since that would make it necessary for all of the (presumably very busy) Iron Chefs to show up for each episode dressed up in their IC outfits, only for all but one to leave without doing anything.
I do think it’s kinda sketchy if the secret ingredient is known in advance, and if they really get more time than an hour. But since it’s not a game show where anything is at stake in terms of money, there’s no requirement that it all be above board. It’s probably a little silly to get all that upset that reality TV isn’t 100% real. I’ve still gotten a fair amount of enjoyment from IC battles over the years.
I enjoy watching them do prep work and cook. I even learn things by watching it and get inspired to try new things.
But you had to know things were not as they seem a long time ago when the contestants were not plating 4 of each separate dish when time was called.
And can you reasonably believe that the judges eat up to 10 different dishes in one sitting?
Especially when the food is all TOO OILY!!!
I heard that the ’secret’ ingredient is actually a short list given to the chefs and the actual ingredient is revealed that day.
I’m not surprised that they have additional time to prep the dishes for the judges. Some plates couldn’t sit while the first chef goes and most would not be as good after sitting for a while versus fresh.
I totally bought the White House veggie story.
Right, from what I’ve read the chefs are given a list of 3 possible secret ingredients. They also have months to prepare and run trials ahead of the actual filming day. So as soon as they find out which of the 3 ingredients it is, they already have their menu planned and can get right to work without discussing with the sous-chefs as to what needs to be done.
Does Lisa Krueger sound particularly rude and condescending, or is just that I don’t like her?
She sounds rude, condescending & I don’t like her either!!
I was actually at a filming of ICA and I can go on and on about how fraudulent the show is, but really it is the same as most “reality shows.” Things are never as they seem…
Wait…
Are you saying the Chairman is not actually a Chairman?!
FN = FRAUD Network. Are we really surprised? FN began losing its integrity when they dissed Sara Moulton with the claim that they were “headed in a new direction”. Seems that FN has lost its way…
They told Sara Moulton she had to go? :( I always wondered why she left the network. I liked her.
Sara Moulton was asked to leave the Food Network by “not having her contract renewed” because she was not K-RAZY enough, and because she has relatively no cleavage, and because she is actually classically trained, and because she didn’t have a tag line as stupid as BAM! or EVOO.
FYI – Sara Moulton can be seen on your local PBS station typically on Saturday mornings or Saturday early afternoon. In San Francisco she is on at 8:00 am and in LA she is on at 1:30 pm on the local PBS stations.
Gypsy: Martin (thanks!) has done a fine job of summarizing why Sara Moulton is no longer with FN. I’d like to add that she attended the University of Michigan – GO BLUE! – in the early ’60s with designs on medical school or a college professorship in Biology or Chemistry. Sara Moulton is one smart cookie with an IQ higher than Douchie and CreamCheese combined. Given what we see on FN now, they wanted to dumb down…way down. Wonder just how low they will go?
I agree, Sara Moulton is brilliant. I wish she was still on the air on FN.
I do disagree with one thing on here though: I cannot say “Go Blue” as I am an avid MSU fan (mostly hockey and basketball, I couldn’t give a rip about football) and I probably wouldn’t exist without MSU’s hockey team (My parents met in the early 70s when they were in school there; my mom and her sister had season tickets as did my dad and his best friend, and now his friend and her sister are married as well). Also, I live about 5 miles from MSU’s campus so I’m biased :)
@Busta: Green’s a nice color, and I like hockey, so all is well here at FNH ;)
As big a fraud as the occupants of the White House themselves.
take your political BS over to foxews.com, you’ll blend right in.
Foxews?
(chuckle chuckle)
Good one, Ferd!
Oh c’mon PDFUDGE, it takes two to tango, right? Except this adm. never asks if you want to dance. And the lefties always go directly to their unimaginative Fox bashing. LOL!
Why go there? Leave the politics out.
Yay Sara’s back – thanks, Martin – but not yet here in San Diego. The date is “tba” – can’t wait.
I think this more than makes the jumping the shark moment official. The shark has been circling since day one, just to be clear.
The shark not only jumped on ICA eons ago, its so beyond jumping the shark as its fin was already used as a secret ingredient…
And secret ingredient IS…. VEGETABLES!!
Please. Freaking out that Iron Chef is faked is on par with freaking out that Wrestling is faked.
Though it would have been kind of awesome if they had to use the same vegetables two weeks later.
Brilliant – comparing ICA to pro wrestling is an EXCELLENT analogy… I never thought of it that way, but its so true!
No one here is “freaking out.” Obviously the show is fake. But advertising a show about White House vegetables for 2 months, and then not using White House vegetables, is pretty pathetic.
You got me there, Jillian. They did kick it up a notch, so to speak.
BAM!!
What else coming out of FN and the White House is fraudulent?
“Worst Chef in America” competition is probably the most fraudulent on so many levels, but it’s still entertaining – as is ICA… Just they are fake.
Hell, I wonder if FoodNetwork ran the guest list for the State Dinner?
“…donated to a local food kitchen,” according to the Obama camp.”
““With a little more investigative research, you would probably find out…”
That the food picked from the garden for the PR photo shoot was just tossed in the trash.
I mean that explanation from the WH is “stupidly” unbelievable. Why would you take the time, money, and resources to send the food to a food kitchen when there’s a kitchen RIGHT THERE IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!????
Jokers, all around.
“…donated to a local food kitchen DUMPSTER…”
Sorry,
Sara M did not to the Univ. M in the 60’s ! She is 50 years old give & take a couple of years!
Sara turns 58 next month and DID attend U of M from ‘70-’74 as I was a student there at the same time.
I’ll concede to the typo: Early ’70s not ’60s. SM is close to my age, BTW, not 50 give or take. I will be 60 by the end of this month.
I can let the fact slide the chefs know what the secret ingredient is beforehand… even that outcomes are decided. But to do a show about Whitehouse vegetables that weren’t from the Whitehouse just continues to erode any credibility the fn has with it’s viewers. Isn’t the billing what makes this episode so different – to consider all the logistics that would have to take place?
Not surprised in the least.
“Kitchen Stadium” isn’t even a kitchen stadium. It’s Studio A, located in the floors above Chelsea Market in New York, the same studio where Guy, Anne, Rachel, etc. all film their shows.
Does it really seem likely they they’d pick veggies in D.C. and transport those self-same veggies all the way to NYC for a television program?
“Hey guys, we need you to get up at 6 a.m. to pick veggies, then travel 225 miles from D.C. to NYC, go thru hair and make-up, assemble your sous chefs and all that and then tape a 2-hour special, which probably took 6 – 8 hours to tape. All in one day.”
Naw. This is television entertainment. Why go thru all that crap when there is a much simpler alternative.
But I will say that FN would have done themselves proud to have been straight-forward with it from the start – good P.R. to have Mario, Bobby and Emeril pick veggies from a garden for a local food kitchen (allegedly).
You’re right, Lana. That would have been thoroughly ridiculous… and great Television. The stunned look on everyone’s faces as they trucked in “Sweet Potatoes” would have been worth it alone.
LOL. They probably would have done this to the Next Iron Chef contestants but not Batali and Lagasse.
No wonder the chairman phoned it in!!! ( literally).
How is this any less of a fraud than anything else coming out of the current administration?
Lisa Krueger good to hear from you again. She has reemerge since the second Twilight film has come and gone.
In spite of the fact that Kitchen Stadium is nothing more than a paper moon hanging over a cardboard sea, I have faith (perhaps naive) that the vegetables picked at the White House garden did not end up in a dumpster. The current occupants are NOT frauds! Do you worst, cynics and flying monkeys. I am not changing my opinion.
I’m FED-Up with “Food Network”!
I used to have the channel ON whenever I was home. NOW, I only tune in for a few shows.
I thought that the “White House Challenge” was a compete Fraud! I could tell that that the chefs were not using the “White House Garden” ingredients.
Food NetWork SUX — Big Time!
Thank Heaven that Tony Bourdain has started his New Season!
At least I have something to look forward TO on TV.
Did no one else see the multitude of reports indicating that the produce grown in the White House garden were toxic? Something about crap the Clintons threw out tainted the soil. It was or wasn’t (depending on the source) too toxic to eat, but you can bet your bottom dollar the Obama Girls never touched them.
I wasn’t too hot on turning the White House into a Plantation. But no one asked me.
HEY! Giada sure gots BIG BEWBIES! Guy sure is a D-BAG! Aunt Sandy sure can pound that vodka, huh? HUH? HEY! Alton Brown! UHHHH — UHHHH — UHHH…. EVOO! Sammys! Look into the camera, Aida! Oh, that wacky Duff! Paula! You eat that butter, girl!
Enough already about the politics! I thought this site was dedicated to snarky insults about the Food Network.
Well, what was the purpose of that? To bore us unconscious so they could steal more tax money for healthcare from our wallets?
Throbbing wieners-
national security couldn’t be compromised with the use of white house veges.
policians alone are lying, greedy douchebags-geeze what do you get when you add the food network in there? Grease.
Another in a long line of recent White House boondoggles. I expect this from TFN, so no surprise there.
No one really was buying that ICA was a real competition?
I guess there are people who believe that the ICA pantry always includes Etruscan walnut oil or Bolivian violet petals just in case one of the challengers needed it.
Who cares – FN is just another entertainment network. PBS for actualy cooking demos. Watching less and less of FN too.
I know the media and the Obama WH have made it seem as if this garden was a first but it wasn’t. The first garden was planted and actually used by the 2nd President and his family. This garden is the biggest and by who you believe the most wasted..IMO.
Iron Chef America, the Food Network and everyone associated with it are frauds. We don’t really care what you’re doing. We don’t care that you kissed Aunt Esther’s (aka Michelle Obama) rear end or that you pretended that the White House Garden was anything other than a PR campaign. We just don’t care anymore.
So that’s how Bobby got califlower after Emeril and Mario stole it all.
As soon as I saw the first of many many many ads for this ep, I wondered why they were serving food from the White House garden that was determined last July to have been grown in sludge that was high in lead and other nasty chemicals.
I can’t get over the Food Network firing Robert Irvine for an imperfect intro to his show….and then they do this. Well…goodbye, FN.
The actual vegetables used were locally sourced, and the chefs were only allowed to use the types of produce that they had harvested from the garden themselves.
Really??? Because Bobby Flay served a Cauliflower whatever and Batali took both…so I think someone better do some more studying before releasing the PR statements.
Just sayin’….I called this a few days back, or at least sniffed pretty close: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/what-happened-on-last-nights-iron-chef/#comment10
Also, as I said there, I had a weird feeling about this whole episode when I watched it. First, Emeril’s coat says “Iron Chef,” but is called “Super Chef” in ads and VOs. There’s got to be a story there.
And then the veggie thing.
Come on, FN, there are still some real food lovers out there who want to learn something, not be fooled and mindlessly entertained!
This does not surprise me because of the use of questionable “judges” and whenever anyone mentioned the garden, it was always said as, “the white house garden”; a common democractic tactic of having everyone use the same phrase ad nauseum.
I really can’t read these comments anymore. You people are so full of BS and yourselves, it’s almost funny. Almost.