Original Commentary

Slightly based on Iron Chef, of course. The home of trout-flavored ice cream. Fortunately, Brisbane won't need to buy black truffles or pate de fois gras for anything on this show. I'm sure you've noticed that we've had a moderate number of references to the Food Network or, at least, the abstract idea of TV shows about food. Why is this? Firstly because we watch a decent amount of it, and secondly because it's hard to write comics about the abstract idea of watching sitcoms - Terrence

Modern Commentary
When we say "Iron Chef" in the original commentary, we mainly meant the original Japanese show, not "Iron Chef America". "Iron Chef America" had just premiered that March and was in heavy rotation as well, though.

The other cooking show that we'd watch back then was Dotch Cooking Show, a Japanese program. Elite chefs would prepare two dishes. They'd spend the first ten minutes talking two different bespoke ingredients, hand-prepared by an elite master artisan. He (or sometimes she) prepared salt or bamboo or soy or what-have-you the way they did it hundreds of years ago, without your modern machinery and shortcuts; he'd be the last person in the world who did it this way and was usually in his 60s or 70s or 80s.

A celebrity panel would, briefly, talk about how amazing these things were and how much love and care was put into this.

Then they'd spend ten minutes talking about how the chefs would prepare dishes to bring out the flavor of these high-quality ingredients in ways that went far beyond normal food. One dish would have the first special ingredient and the second dish would have the other.

Then the celebrity panel would vote on which dish they want. If you voted for the dish that got the most votes, you got to eat it. If you voted for the other dish, you got to sit and watch the winners eat.- Terrence