Editing Iron Chef (section)

====''Iron Chef USA''====

Around Christmas 2001, the [[UPN]] network presented two one-hour episodes of ''[[Iron Chef USA]]'' hosted by [[William Shatner]] as "The Chairman of the American Culinary Academy".  Competition took place inside "Kitchen Arena" (built in Garden Arena in the Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel).  Commentary was provided by [[Michael Burger]] and [[Anthony Dias Blue]], with floor reporting by [[Sissy Biggers]].  The show featured four Iron Chefs: Iron Chef American [[Todd English]] (whose specialty is actually Mediterranean food), Iron Chef French Jean Francois Meteigner, Iron Chef Italian [[Alessandro Stratta]], and Iron Chef Asian [[Roy Yamaguchi]].  In the show's only two battles, English defeated [[Kerry Simon]] in a dungeness crab battle, and Stratta defeated [[Marcus Samuelsson]] in a turkey battle.

These shows were neither a critical nor popular success, perhaps because the show focused little on cooking&mdash;a major part of the Japanese program. The show had a small audience section with bleachers, and the audience yelled relentlessly during the show (sounding much like a sports audience). Shatner walked around the kitchen sampling the more expensive items, the chefs refused to say what they were doing, and the cameras rarely showed the food preparation.