And yes, it was indeed tragic that they had to pull it off the air, but they say it was because it was *really* expensive to keep dressing Kaga like Liberace and maintaining the massive stock of ingredients, sometimes incredibly expensive ingredients. I vaguely remember an episode where one chef bragged that he had used $10,000 worth of truffles just to flavor his broth, or something like that?

I think there’s also a cultural difference that needs to be broken. In the original, there was real honor involved and the competition meant something. The food meant something, too. Take the episode Daniel embedded above: the challenger said specifically that it wasn’t his intention to win, it was his intention to educate on the classical style of the edo-mai-zushi (I spell that correctly?).

However, I do think I like the judges better on the American version (however, my husband and I will still cover our faces and say “it’s so pretty” like every actress did on the Japanese version).

On top of that, I often learned more from the original show. Alton is a better host, but Kevin is terrible and lets just say, I don’t think that beyond Mario and Morimoto, America’s Iron Chefs are much to speak of. The food they cook is so hyper-regionalized as to be senseless to much of the rest of the country.