I never saw this article when it originally was published, but I just read the piece by a food critic from the Voice who “exposes” Iron Chef as a fraud of a show.

Wait, you mean to tell me that the show that revolves around an ambiguously Asian-looking guy who does somersaults of a stage and then arbitrarily yells out an ingredient with which two chefs have to prepare a five course meal isn’t a completely candid and sincere head-to-head battle in which their cooking abilities are tested at the highest level in a kitchen called Kitchen Stadium? Oh, weird.

This guy for the Voice (I’m going to avoid using his name so that it won’t come up on his Google alert) pretty much just writes a really angry account of what his experience at the Iron Chef taping was like— spoiler alert: he hated everything about it. He seems especially miffed that the show is edited to incite drama (this one should have been obvious considering the show runtime is probably about 44 minutes and the allotted cooking time is an hour, and of the runtime, only about 30, if that, are showing cooking) and that everything isn’t completely impromptu, to be fair, the show only recently admitted to ABC News that the contestants and Iron Chef are given a short list of three possible ingredients that it will possibly be, allowing them and their staff to come up with a menu for each scenario, but I mean, otherwise I can’t imagine any chef, Iron or otherwise, would agree to put themselves in such a vulnerable position to make potentially awful, but impromptu, food on national television.

This whole article rubbed me the wrong way because the author made it seem like he was really pulling the rug out from under the show, but it seems silly (and annoying) to take such a cold hard look at something that inherently doesn’t take itself that seriously— I don’t think on Morimoto or Batali’s list of “things I’m most proud of” being an Iron Chef isn’t in the top 20, and I bet Bobby Flay is more happy to win a Throwdown rather than an Iron Chef match. It was just guy trying to be angry about something that is lighthearted and fun, it’s worth reading if you want to hear a guy complain a lot, but for the same insight (not all three chefs are present for every taping!) in a much less curmudgeon-y voice, I’d recommend checking out the ABC News video on the show that came out last week.