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" In the first episode of The Next Iron Chef&amp;#039;s third season: Duskie Estes gets a little cocky, Andrew Kirschner&amp;#039;s grub gets spat out, and Ming Tsai is the chef to beat. Now that we&amp;#039;ve said goodbye to Top Chef, and as part of a new ongoing recap series, we talked to season-one winner and judge Michael Symon about the surprise elimination and whether The Chairman&amp;#039;s head really makes that weird noise. ESQUIRE: The secret ingredient for the first challenge was bread. What makes an ingredient difficult to work with? MICHAEL SYMON: For me, it&amp;#039;s always hardest to work with something that&amp;#039;s not a protein, because it&amp;#039;s a little harder to make it the star of the show. But I think the hard part of the sandwich challenge was that you&amp;#039;re taking something that&amp;#039;s an American classic \u2014 people have in their mind what a sandwich should be.  ESQ: Chef Pagan voted his own sandwich worst and Chef Estes voted hers best. Would you ever vote for yourself to win or lose? MS: I wouldn&amp;#039;t have done either of those things. I think it showed a lot about the character and the make-up of both chefs. You have Chef Estes, who obviously has a lot of confidence, and Chef Pagan, who was a little more unsure of himself. He&amp;#039;s in an environment where he&amp;#039;s surrounded by all these other great chefs and he let self-doubt creep in. I mean, this season&amp;#039;s chefs really have a broad depth of talents. I think they would have given my season a run for our money. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong, we&amp;#039;d win. But it&amp;#039;s a great group of chefs. ESQ: It seemed like a lot of contestants were intimidated by Chef Tsai.  MS: I&amp;#039;m sure they were. I bet you when they walked in, most of them thought he was a judge. ESQ: Is it fair that he&amp;#039;s competing? MS: Absolutely. Some of these chefs are more well-known by the public, but let me assure you that all these chefs are extremely talented. If I had to pick a favorite from day one? Chef Tsai has been around. He knows how to handle pressure. ESQ: For the Chairman&amp;#039;s Challenge the chefs had to be ingenious using the one ingredient they would bring to a desert island. What would you have brought? MS: I probably would have gone pig or egg. But here&amp;#039;s the thing: If I picked egg, then I&amp;#039;m sitting on this beach with a grill in front of me. I guess that&amp;#039;s the point of it. But before I knew what the challenge was I would have been thinking, &amp;quot;I can make flour so I could make pasta, I can make eggs by themselves.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s versatile. ESQ: Chef Tsai won, but you seemed to be pulling for Forgione. MS: The other judges didn&amp;#039;t like Forgione&amp;#039;s dish. I really work hard in judging Next Iron Chef to judge on technique and not what my personal opinion is. Just because I may not like something spicy or sweet doesn&amp;#039;t meant the dish wasn&amp;#039;t done correctly. Out of everything on the beach that day, nothing was cooked as well as Forgione&amp;#039;s coconut chicken. The wing was a little sweet, but not nearly as sweet as the other judges found it. ESQ: Donatella is pretty harsh. She even spat out Kirschner&amp;#039;s dish. MS: That hot pepper almost blew her head off. One of the lessons of eating is, &amp;quot;Let the chef explain the dish before you dig in.&amp;quot; But the other side of that is, &amp;quot;You shouldn&amp;#039;t need directions to eat food.&amp;quot; ESQ: Which is a bigger kiss of death, burning a judge&amp;#039;s tongue or giving them food with sand in it? MS: Pagan gave me the food with the sand. And part of me said, &amp;quot;How can I fault there being sand in the food on a windy beach?&amp;quot; But none of the other chefs had sand in their food. Nine of them figured out how to not get it in there. It&amp;#039;s hard, though. It&amp;#039;s just brutal sending people home. Especially Kirschner, who I thought would be there to the end. The fat between the meat and skin of the duck did him in. ESQ: We have to ask: What&amp;#039;s up with the sound effects? Whenever Mark Dacascos moves his head he sounds like a cartoon. MS: Part of the allure of Iron Chef is that it&amp;#039;s a very serious show. It&amp;#039;s an intense showdown, two chefs going head to head in Kitchen Stadium. That swishing sound brings a little levity to it. I can assure you that when I&amp;#039;m standing next to him in person his head does not make that noise. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a8628/next-iron-chef-season-3-premiere-100410/>