Iron Chef America

And, uh, and she, w- you know, Matt Offerman is really funny, great guy, and, and, uh, we were in this show together.

And then she afterwards was like, "Hey, you're really funny." And then I was working as an assistant editor at the time on Iron Chef America.

I was a nighttime assistant editor [laughs] and-

Oh, sick

Uh, yeah, no.

Uh, well, I don't know.

It, uh, it was just Iron Chef America.

I don't know what the Masters were.

[laughs] But here's the, no, but here's the thing.

I actually, I actually think, you know, casting Mark Dacascos would be great, but the general, the general audience would be like, "Man, that's the motherfucker from Iron Chef.

He don't know martial arts." And lo and behold-

Right

What's the- the- the-

That was Iron Chef America-

Bobby Flay

Oh, Bobby.

... which was, which was an inferior version.

Iron Chef Japan-

Yeah, Iron Chef America was rough

... was unreal because they would have the Iron Chefs and they all came out of the ground-

Aziza became the first Moroccan restaurant in the US to earn a Michelin star in 2010, and Mourad earned a second star in 2015, the same year as its opening.

He's also a James Beard Award finalist for Best Chef West and was the 2009 winner of Iron Chef America.

All very impressive accolades, might I add.

Yes, I'm excited to make this recipe 'cause I, I, uh, he's obviously the right man for the job.

On Beat Bobby Flay, incoming chefs know the general format, but there is no prep time.

The Iron Chef is so much different.

There's an extensive production preparation period put into effect behind the scenes.

The cooking itself is exactly what the show suggests.

Chin Kenichi, Morimoto-san, like Iron Chef Sakai was my favorite.

And then all of a sudden they came out with Iron Chef America.

And I remember the first few contestants of it ever.

You got Rick Bayless and you got, I think Wolfgang was one of the original chefs was going to do this show.

Back to Texas, I started making friends with chefs that I revered in San Antonio that I never knew prior.

Yeah, so one day I get, I can't remember if it was a message on Instagram or something or an email saying, we are casting agents.

We're looking to do the kind of next round of Iron Chef America.

And at this point, Iron Chef had kind of gone off the air and was like coming back.

Ooh, good point.

But right after I won, when I became an Iron Chef, I'd be grocery shopping-

Mm-hmm

... and people would be like, "Ooh, let's see what an Iron Chef has in his cart."

Oh, yeah.

Mm.