When I called Scripps Networks, the parent company of Food Network, spokeswoman Kristin Alm said she had not heard about the Flay controversy. “Anything that Bobby Flay would do would be choreographed and instigated by us, if we are producing that show,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.” 
 
 Another person with direct knowledge of the situation, who was on set that day, says there is ongoing debate about whether the blurring will happen, or if another solution will be found. “That entire thing is in flux right now,” this person said. “Nothing has been decided or settled.” Also in flux: the premiere date of Iron Chef Showdown, which features restaurateur John Besh as a judge. The show was originally scheduled to bow November 8, but on October 21, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a long investigation into sexual harassment allegations involving Besh. 
 
 Losing control over one of its marquee stars is apparently not something Scripps wants to acknowledge. Following the T-shirt incident, Triage sent a recording to Scripps in Knoxville, Tennessee. According to another well-placed source affiliated with the production, top executives met and came to a decision: the shirt would be blurred out. If any announcement were to be made about Flay’s Iron Chef future, it wouldn’t look like this. 
 
 Adding fuel to the fire, when the Food Network universe converged in New York on a mid-October weekend for the annual New York City Wine and Food Festival, Flay did not appear—not even at the “Rooftop Iron Chef Showdown” Saturday night. He did have time to leave a New York restaurant that Sunday with Scarlett Johansson, though. 
 
 I spoke to several people associated with the show and the network, none of whom could confirm Flay’s future plans. They verified only his intention to reveal a shirt—and a message—that he knew couldn’t be cut in post. 
 
 But Flay’s move, confirmed by two on-set sources, reveals a larger set of tensions. His apparent lack of interest in remaining part of Iron Chef, a show in which Flay has appeared on and off for 17 years, comes at a momentous time for Food Network’s majority owner, Scripps Networks—which Discovery Communications is trying to buy for $14.6 billion in a deal that could close in early 2018. 
 
 Flay is known for choosing his moves carefully, and he usually means what he says. Neither he nor producers at Triage Entertainment, the company that makes Iron Chef Showdown, responded to repeated requests for comment about the T-shirt incident. A spokesman for Food Network—where the show airs—would neither confirm nor deny that the incident had even occurred. 
 
 Iron Chef is a live cooking competition, so the cameras kept rolling. But when the tape stopped, producers rushed in. “Bobby,” they said, according to a source close to the production, “we’re not going to be able to cut around that.” 
 
 There was stunned silence on set at a taping of Iron Chef Showdown this past summer in Southern California, when Bobby Flay tore off his apron mid-battle to reveal a T-shirt that read: “THIS IS MY LAST IRON CHEF BATTLE EVER.” 
 
 Scripps, Flay, and Food Network have not yet responded to requests for further comment. But this carefully crafted statement speaks volumes—whether it was issued under pressure from the network, because of a deal that was struck after the incident, or another reason entirely. 
 
 “This past summer when I was in production on Iron Chef Showdown, I wore a T-shirt to have a little fun during my last battle this season. In hindsight, it was probably not the best decision because it’s just creating confusion. Food Network has been part of my family for over 20 years and will absolutely continue to be, and though there is a talented bench of Iron Chefs to tap, if I were asked, I’d be excited to return to Kitchen Stadium, whenever my schedule allows.” 
 
 Update (October 26, 8 a.m.): More than 12 hours after this story was published, Flay gave a statement to People in which he confirmed the t-shirt incident but characterized it as a joke. He also indicated that he is willing to return to *Iron Chef “whenever my schedule allows.” His full statement: 
 
 When Flay first appeared on Food Network in 1994, initially as a guest on the Robin Leach-hosted Talking Food, he was known as the young, trendsetting chef who ran Mesa Grill in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. Soon, he was given his own show: Grillin’ and Chillin’, shot on a lot behind the Home Shopping Network studios in Florida. Forty-two episodes were filmed in seven days; Flay was paid $200 for each. 
 
 Iron Chef, a dramatic Japanese cooking competition in which chefs are challenged to make dishes based on unusual secret ingredients, came to the U.S. in 1999 with an episode that pitted the brash Flay against dignified Masaharu Morimoto—who was shocked when Flay’s sous chefs celebrated the end of their first battle by hoisting their leader onto a cutting board. Asked by the on-camera reporter about his competitor, Morimoto said, “He’s no chef.” 
 
 “Why?” 
 
 “He stood on the cutting board. In Japan, the cutting board is sacred to us.” 
 
 Ultimately, Flay lost that battle. But it triggered an international scandal of the best kind: CNN, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the New York Post all ran stories on the Japanese chef who was miffed at the upstart American. Iron Chef became a culture phenomenon on Food Network, bringing millions of viewers to a channel that had previously drawn 84,000 daytime viewers on average and spawning a spinoff, Iron Chef America. 
 
 Flay, too, rode that first headline-grabbing appearance to become the sort of celebrity chef who can command more than $100,000 for a public appearance. He’s logged more than 40 wins on Iron Chef America, weathered several high-profile relationships (and a tabloid divorce), and opened more well-reviewed restaurants. He’s also become one of Food Network’s most visible brands, as the face of 14 separate series—eight of which are still producing new episodes. 
 
 Despite the message he delivered at that contentious Iron Chef taping, all indications are that Flay is not planning to leave Food Network entirely. He spent this past summer taping the latest season of Food Network Star, in which he co-stars with Giada De Laurentiis; the 13th season of Beat Bobby Flay is currently running. 
 
 But Iron Chef existed before Bobby Flay was Bobby Flay; there are many chefs in its kitchens. His production company Rock Shrimp doesn’t produce it, and it has no tie to his cookbooks. “Iron Chef is a lot of work,” former Food network executive Bruce Seidel told me. “It’s a lot of thinking. It’s taking time away from your restaurants. You’ve got to put your team together. You have to organize your ingredients,” he said. 
 
 And for Flay especially, the effort may not be worth the payoff. The format is tired; winning yet another Iron Chef battle can hardly boost his reputation further at this point. Filming each episode also requires the New York-based chef to fly to Los Angeles and spend days prepping with his team. (Iron Chef America was previously taped at the Food Network studios in Manhattan.) For Beat Bobby Flay—filmed in New York—he can take the subway. 
 
 If this season of Iron Chef is in fact Flay’s last, frequent judge Karine Bakhoum—who does not appear in the current season—admires his way of letting everyone know. “That’s a very funny and creative way to get your message across,” she told me. 
 
 Less adept has been John Besh. On October 23, Besh resigned from the restaurant company he founded and co-owns after an eight-month long investigation revealed 25 current and former Besh Group employees said they were victims of sexual harassment. Within days, New Orleans public television channel WYES announced it would no longer broadcast episodes of the two cooking series it produced starring Besh. A Food Network spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about what, if anything, would be done to address the charges on Iron Chef Showdown. 
 
 Attempting to build a television empire around chefs is often difficult. Even the most innocent-looking food-world personalities can be volatile and unpredictable—like Paula Deen, whose racist immolation was responsible for Food Network’s last empire-crumbling crisis. Perhaps that’s why the empire builders are so intent on insisting that everything is fine at the network, even after Flay’s outburst. Many people have millions of dollars invested in that very idea: according to an S.E.C. filing, Scripps CEO Ken Lowe is due to get a $91.6 million golden parachute from the company’s sale to Discovery Communications. COO Burton Jablin will receive $34.9 million, and Chief Financial and Development Officer Lori Hickok $11.9 million. 
 
 There are also other boardrooms with an interest in Food Network maintaining whatever strength it can amid challenging times for cable TV. While Scripps wholly owns a variety of networks, including HGTV, it only owns about 70 percent of Food Network. The remaining 30 percent is held by Tribune Media, itself mired in a controversial merger with Sinclair Broadcast Group. 
 
 It’s likely that at this pivotal moment, the network has purposefully chosen to invest in reboots that seemed safe—like Iron Chef America, which had been out of production for about four years before being resurrected as Iron Chef Gauntlet in spring 2017. 
 
 What they may have forgotten, though, is that the original Iron Chef was never safe. When the show launched in Japan in the early 1990s, most people didn’t think of chefs as artists. Kitchen Stadium was a groundbreaking arena that showed how intense pressure could produce miracles—and must-watch television. 
 
 But along the way, the spirit of Iron Chef became corporatized. The show got popular; Food Network began corralling its talent, transforming creatives into workhorses who churned out TV episodes and concentrated on delivering bottom-line results for shareholders and CEOs. Food Network’s cultural import has declined significantly since this strategy became its baseline; the network has not created a breakout star since Guy Fieri a decade ago. 
 
 Scripps may succeed, through blurring or negotiation, in deflecting news of Flay’s exit-by-T-shirt from interfering with their overall business plans. But I studied him and the network closely for my book on the channel’s history, and this situation brings two things to mind: Flay opened Mesa Grill in the midst of a recession, when few others dared to touch New York. When former Food Network president Reese Schonfeld first agreed in 1995 to air what would become Grillin’ and Chillin,’ he wanted a show about hot dogs and hamburgers; Flay insisted on making the higher end, Southwestern-style cuisine that made him famous. In both instances, the chef proved victorious. 
 
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 It's getting heated in the kitchen and it has nothing to do with food. 
 
 Bobby Flay has quit the upcoming Food Network show Iron Chef Showdown, according to Vanity Fair. And he did it in particularly dramatic fashion...literally. 
 
 Flay, 52, reportedly tore off his apron mid-battle during the filming of the second season this past summer to reveal he was wearing a t-shirt that read: "THIS IS MY LAST IRON CHEF BATTLE EVER." According to Vanity Fair, the crew kept filming, as it is a live competition, but when a producer told the celebrity chef, "We're not going to be able to cut around that," Flay's response was: "I know. That's the point." 
 
 But in a statement provided to E! News, Flay is setting the record straight on the incident.
– It was either one of the most epic ways to publicly quit a high-profile job or, as he now says, a misunderstood joke. Either way, celeb chef Bobby Flay's 17-year run with Iron Chef seems to be in question. Vanity Fair first reported the stunt: During a summer taping for the upcoming season of Iron Chef Showdown, Flay pulled off his apron mid-show to reveal a shirt that read, "THIS IS MY LAST IRON CHEF BATTLE EVER." The show is taped live and thus couldn't be stopped, and when confused producers reminded Flay of this afterward, he replied, "That's the point." The story notes that Flay chooses his words and actions carefully, suggesting friction between Flay and the Food Network. Now, however, Flay is downplaying the incident. In a statement, Flay says he wore the shirt "to have a little fun," but "in hindsight, it was probably not the best decision because it's just creating confusion," per E! News. He added a not-quite overwhelming sentiment in regard to the show: "If I were asked, I'd be excited to return to Kitchen Stadium, whenever my schedule allows." The new series is supposed to debut Nov. 8, but that could be delayed given sexual harassment allegations against new judge John Besh. And all of this comes amid the backdrop of Discovery Communications trying to buy Food Network parent Scripps Networks. The latter would obviously not be thrilled to have trouble with a top chef bubble up now, notes Vanity Fair. It's not yet clear whether the show will blur Flay's T-shirt message when the episode finally airs.