OK.  So I started this as a recipe blog and not a general foodie blog but I’ve got to get this off my chest.  I am not into reality tv like Survivor or American Teen Idol, but I love Search for the Next Food Network Star and Search For the Next Iron Chef, the latter of which concluded this past Sunday night.  Did I say “concluded”?  Ended in a god awful train wreck would be more accurate.

What were the reigning Iron Chefs thinking when they cast thier votes?  Granted, we can’t taste the dishes, but this Michael Symon they chose as winner looks like a tatooed crack-crazed convenience store clerk and should be viewed as an embarrassment to his profession rather than being rewarded.

The second runner up, who should have won, was John Besh who comports himself with obvious pride in his profession.   He’s an ex-Marine who took his gun and a boat and a whole lot of beans around his hometown of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina and fed a lot of people.  Here’s a snippet from his bio on Food Network which totally eclipses Seymore’s:

Chef John Besh Acclaimed chef John grew up hunting and fishing in Southern Louisiana, learning at an early age the essentials of Louisiana’s rich culinary traditions. After graduating from The Culinary Institute of America, his talent and drive have earned John critical kudos from the outset of his career: in 1999, Food & Wine named him one of the “Top 10 Best New Chefs in America.” In 2003, Gourmet magazine included Restaurant August in its “Guide to America’s Best Restaurants,” and in 2006, it cited Restaurant August as one of America’s Top 50 Restaurants. In 2005, John received a nomination for a James Beard Award, and he won the Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southeast in 2006. Also that year, he defeated Chef Mario Batali on Iron Chef America on Food Network, scoring a victory in the andouille sausage battle. The 2007 Zagat Guide rates Restaurant August #1 in New Orleans for both Food and Service.

I was embarrassed for America by Symon when he showed up in cutoffs and a T-shirt at the American Ambassador to France’s residence to cook for the Ambassador’s guests.   Has he ever considered that maybe the reason Europeans supposedly disdain our culture is not so much our politics as our “culture”?  Symon is a poster child for The Ugly American.

I don’t know what Bobby Flay, Cat Cora and Morimoto were thinking - with as many near last place showings as Symon had during the competition they had to know he will be the easier one to defeat than John Besh.  One of the parting comments I heard regarding Besh made by Alton Brown was that at times he had been “cocky”.  Sorry. That’s a justifiable part of being a Marine.

I hope they clean Symon up as a condition of his contract and that his skills carry him on to provide genuinely good cooking shows for the Food Network, much as they pegged a winner in Guy Fieri, winner of the 2006 Search for the Next Food Network Star who has since spun off into several good shows. 

As for John Besh? He is a true American Chef, and in my eyes, a true American Iron Chef.