OK, now I feel doubly lied to.  Not only did the Food Network insinuate that the First Lady would play a key role in their White House Iron Chef, but now it turns out that the produce used in the cooking segment was not the same produce picked in the White House garden by the famous chefs.

At the beginning of the two-hour special, the chefs were shown picking sweet potatoes, broccoli, fennel and tomatillos from the White House garden. Then the chefs were seen walking into Kitchen Stadium, produce in hand. One problem: The show is filmed in New York City.

“Due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the ‘Super Chef Battle’ was not actually from the White House garden,” said Food Network spokeswoman Lisa Krueger in a statement to The Talk.

Instead, the chefs used replacement produce, though only the same types of fruits and vegetables picked from the White House garden.

Replacement produce!  You can’t replace the Secret Ingredient on Iron Chef.  When you specifically name the ingredient to be produce from the White House garden, you can’t substitute fare from your local Whole Foods.  It’s like replacing Beluga with your local sushi takeout roe.  They may both be fish eggs, but no one is going to spend $5K for a kilo of sushi roe. Now I just want to slap Jane Seymour for each time remarked on how unbelievably “fresh” the produce tasted.

Additionally, this was just dumb.  It’s a 3 hour trip from DC to NYC, there is no reason why they couldn’t use the same produce if it was planned properly.  Or they could have filmed in DC.  Either way, this was a pointless lie, and an obnoxious one at that. The Food Network may have been served extra helpings of viewers for its White House special, but how many viewers are now left with a sour taste in their mouth?

Tags: food network, freshness, Iron Chef, Obama, white house, white house garden

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 12:06 pm and is filed under farming, food shopping, gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.