If you read what I wrote I think you’ll see that I’m making a straightforward case—the judges are supposed to be deciding “whose cuisine reigns supreme” but in actuality, they’re really looking for chefs coming from a certain tradition. It strikes me as being off that in America, where we have so many intermingling cultures, that a Mexican chef is being told to stop “milking” his specialty.

John pretty much hits the nail on the head on the sexism bit. I’m not quite sure Cat Cora is up to the same level, but why is that? I’m not entirely convinced that it’s all about her food.

The problem with the argument as you frame it Eric is that racism and sexism aren’t always conscious. I’m not suggesting that people are picking on Cat Cora because she’s a woman; I’m suggesting that Cat Cora often seems to be treated differently than the other three chefs who are all male. That could be for a number of reasons—she’s a lesbian, she’s short, she’s from the south… whatever. But I tend to think that she’s held to a different standard from the get-go because of her gender.

Judging non-western cuisine in a western format is a bit less straightforward, but I still don’t agree with the judge’s comment. If you want to be generous, one could argue that the judge was telling him that he needed to push himself out of his comfort zone— which was probably what he meant but not what he said.

And besides, I think if you looked into the culinary world I think you’d find that it is dominated by men. Men own the restaurants and hire the chefs. France and Italy are not well known for their gender equity…

Basically I suspect your “racism” ultimately comes down to the style of cooking. Batali and Flay cook in the most “American” styles (or the styles most Americans are used to), Italian and Southwestern respectively.

It should be no surprise that in the American culinary scene there is going to be a bias towards European style cooking and in Asia you’d probably find a bias towards Asian style cooking (as broad a category as that actually happens to be). My only response to that can be, “duh!”

It should also be no surprise that the guy who cooks Italian is challenged more than the woman who cooks Greek. It should also be no surprise that given Southwestern cuisine and BBQ dominates large regions of our country, that the guy who kicks in that style is challenged more than the Japanese cook.

I don’t think it boils down to racism in the slightest.

As to Cat Cora, I thought her inclusion smacked of tokenism, largely because my first impressions of her were that she wasn’t in the same league as the other Iron Chefs, especially based on her ICA results. But recently I have begun to wonder much as you have if the whole operation (cuisine, not ICA) is somehow biased against women. Is her ICA performance a knock on her ability, her food or her sex–when it should really just be about her food? It’s also possible that she simply doesn’t do the Iron Chef bit as well as the others, which is something that could be true of many challengers, too.

Eric, I don’t even know how to respond to that since you’re not really making a point. I will simply quote myself and hope you think about it in the context of your comment:

“It’s not a question whether the product from Western Europe is in any way inferior—clearly, French cuisine is incredible—but rather whether everything ought to be judged by those standards.”

I also don’t buy your French Cuisine argument, particularly where you use it as a reason that Batali and Flay get more action on the show. That’s just silly!

The Law of Small Numbers is always going to be a problem. If you have only two women in a group of eight, it’s going to be rough to lose one, then the other. On the other hand, people will cry foul if you go out of the way to keep the women in the competition. And on the gripping hand, in a group of eight, 2 of 8 versus 4 of 8 is only a difference of two competitors — so how do you choose?

The Next Food Network Star went down to two women in the Finals. Gordon Ramsey on Hell’s Kitchen seems to have a bias towards the women. There were three Finalists in Top Chef 3, two men and one women — can’t have 50% participation with an odd number. One of the men, Hung, won that competition, but the woman had a hard time cooking at a club in Aspen CO at 10,000 feet.

Anyway, I too wondered some about the Latin food comment, but in a lot of these cooking competition shows, all sorts of chefs have been picked on for only trying to do seafood or pork or heavy French sauces, etc. Yet given the constraints of working with da tech in that episode, one wonders about the logic of suggesting one experiment outside your comfort zone while using new and unfamiliar technologies? Seems a bit too early in the competition for such warnings. Of course, maybe an editor just thought it was “good TV”. During the Reunion Show on Top Chef 3, we found out that the judges typically argued for six or more hours — we only ever saw part of the debate and never realized how long the competitors were sitting around waiting to be called in. Yikes!

Dr. Phil