About a year ago, Village Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema attended a taping of Iron Chef America at the Food Network's Chelsea studios. Thanks to a friend's invite, the Food Network had no idea he was watching and waiting to blow the cover off the whole phony operation once the episode finally aired. Now Sietsema is here to report that the series is “more bogus than even I had imagined.” How bogus is it? Well,......

Feed Your Mind is a new column that will focus on food-related books. Have you ever wondered what sparked the culinary careers of the world's top chefs? Sure, they may be huge names today, but where did they start and how did they get there? How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations from the World's Greatest Chefs is an entertaining view into pivotal moments in the lives of culinary leaders like Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain,......

Where can you taste dishes from Bobby Flay, Lidia Bastianich, Dan Barber, Tom Valenti, Joey Campanaro and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto all under one roof? At New York Magazine's annual Taste of New York, a fundraiser for City Harvest. The cocktails (from some of the city's best: Pegu Club, Flatiron Lounge, and Little Branch) were flowing and the crowd was on a mission to taste everything these chefs could dish out. One of the......

Gothamist's Star Chefs report is brought to us by Regina Varolli, a Manhattan-based freelance writer. Though most of her private clients are in DC, she lives here because the food is better, in general. On day two of the International Chefs Congress, Pierre Hermé was announced as “The God of Pastry.” With many foreign chefs requiring English assistance, only Hermé had award-winning cookbook author Dori Greenspan as his translator, pictured below. With Hermé on stage......

Gothamist's Star Chefs report is brought to us by Regina Varolli, a Manhattan-based freelance writer. Though most of her private clients are in DC, she lives here because the food is better, in general. After 11 years on the web, StarChefs.com held its inaugural “International Chefs Congress” last week. Gathering chefs from around the globe, the event boasted an impressive line-up including pastry god Pierre Hermé, elBulli’s Albert Adrià, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, NYC chemist-chefs......

Reading the William Grimes' NY Times feature on Iron Chef America on the Food Network (it premieres this Sunday) only made Gothamist, to borrow a phrase from another Food TV personality, kick our irrational hatred of Bobby Flay up a notch. BAM! Forever will the memory of Bobby Flay jumping up on the kitchen counter during the 2000 Iron Chef showdown between Flay and Masaharu Morimoto be burned in our brains. Grimes mentions the......

This weekend, if you find yourself tired of partying and you just want to kick back, why not invite some friends over and watch Iron Chef America, where American chefs Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck, and Mario Batali go head-to-head with Iron Chefs Masaharu Morimoto and Hiroyuki Sakai? It's is wall-to-wall Iron Chef action, with episodes shown Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which has the Tag Team Finale that, in finale tradition, has an unexpected twist.......