Throwdown! Bobby Flay jumps the shark

Maybe this critique is unfair. Maybe I should wait for all the episodes of the show to air but at this point I feel secure in making the following statement: Throwdown! is the biggest mistake of Bobby Flay's television career. Why, because in it he comes off as a smug, arrogant bully.


Let’s back up for a minute. The premise for the show is that someone who is a great cook with one specialty, say barbeque, is invited by the Food Network staff to audition for their own show, or to be profiled on an existing show, or some such rouse that allows for the presence of the Food TV camera people without arousing suspicion. The cook invites a large group of friends and prepares to serve his/her specialty when, from out of nowhere, Bobby Flay shows up in a black SUV and throws down the gauntlet. A cook-off ensues and some “judges” are brought out to determine the winner.

What’s wrong with this? After all, Bobby shows up on the other cook’s turf and prepares the other cook’s specialty to be tasted by a crowd that is biased towards the other cook. Plus, the other cook gets to be featured on national television. Sometimes, there is nothing wrong with it at all. Sometimes the other cook has enough moxie to stand up to the NY Times 3 star (Bollo) and 2 star (Mesa Grill) chef and talk enough trash to make the whole thing fun.

The problem comes when the other cook is intimidated by Bobby Flay. I have seen two episodes of the show where this was obviously the case. The first was chowder expert Ben Sargeant who hosted a party in Brooklyn. The panic that washed over his face when Bobby got out of the SUV was obvious. Then when “judge” Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar picked Bobby’s chowder I just felt really bad for the guy.

Worse was when Bobby took on wedding cake designer Michelle Doll. At the beginning of the show Bobby admitted to having never baked a wedding cake. Yet, there he was at Tavern on the Green, wheeling in a cake that he predicted would taste so much better than his opponent’s that he could overcome his obvious lack of skill in the cake decorating department. Ms. Doll came off as meek and even though she won the contest I still felt bad that she’d been put through the process. Did the fact that Bobby was a wedding cake making novice make for a unique challenge or raise the question of what kind of a jerk would think he could out-do someone at their specialty with only one try?

Throw down comes on the heels of the popularity of Iron Chef and its little sister Iron Chef America but those shows have an element of fun to them. The sides are evenly matched and the show, at least the Japanese version, sometimes seems to have a predetermined outcome. Who cares who wins when one professional chef bests another, anyway? It’s the look on the face of these contestants and the cock-sure attitude of the star that make Throwdown such a turnoff.