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" On this week&amp;#039;s Next Iron Chef: The word of the day was transformation, and transform they did \u2014 turning condiments into real dishes (for the first challenge), and San Diego&amp;#039;s Del Mar Fairgrounds into a kitchen (for the second). The results were spectacular, a kind of culinary freak show (in the good way): grilled-corn snow cones, fried root-beer floats, chocolate-mayonnaise pudding. In the end, chef Celina Tio won after staring down her least favorite ingredient \u2014 hot sauce \u2014 and taking both challenges. In the latest installment of our weekly recaps, we talked with judge Michael Symon (also soon to be hosting Food Network&amp;#039;s Food Feuds) about cooking under pressure, the meaning of Michelin stars, and that funny suit that Alton Brown was wearing. ESQUIRE: It seems like there was some increased competition this week: Canora and Tsai were really going at it! MICHAEL SYMON: As the competition goes further along, you start to see who&amp;#039;s rising and who&amp;#039;s falling and I think these are two chefs who are both rising. The fire is coming out a little bit where they are becoming more competitive with each other. I think when the show started the chefs all looked at Ming and were wondering, Oh my god, what are we going to do? And all of a sudden a lot of these chefs are showing that they&amp;#039;re more than capable of hanging at that level. ESQ: This theme of transformation was a great idea. How challenging was that for the chefs? MS: I believe Marco said it: What chefs do on a daily basis is transformation. To take something that comes from the dirt and turn it into a beautiful meal \u2014 that&amp;#039;s transformation. In Iron Chef, you need to take a dish that&amp;#039;s very recognizable and identifiable to people and transform it into something that&amp;#039;s unique and different. It&amp;#039;s not easy because people have a preconceived notion in their head of how things should taste before they taste it.  ESQ: Shopping and cooking at a county fair: That sounds like fun. MS: Oh, it&amp;#039;s brutal. When you&amp;#039;re at a fair, they&amp;#039;re not going to have some of the things that you&amp;#039;re accustomed to having product-wise as a chef. I think this one was a good one because it pushed their creative boundaries. All of the chefs this week were very much out of their comfort zone and we got to see what happened. ESQ: Some of the more creative dishes that came out of the challenges sounded great on paper. A grilled-corn snow cone. An avocado-chocolate beignet. Mayonnaise-chocolate pudding. Do you think the creativity inspired by the theme triumphed or did it prove to be a failure?  MS: I think it triumphed in most cases. The corn snow cone was a fantastic idea, but the corn just burnt on the grill \u2014 that&amp;#039;s what got the best of them. And the avocado-and-chocolate beignet was spectacular, maybe one of the best bites all day.  ESQ: The judges ate the banana-peel garnish on Chef Tsai&amp;#039;s plate. Do you think we can fault him for that?  MS: I didn&amp;#039;t eat it! That is the reason why you very rarely see inedible garnishes on food: When you put something on the plate that may not be edible, you can&amp;#039;t control the diner, or in this case the judge. Do I think that they should have known better not to eat it? Absolutely. But the other side of that is Ming&amp;#039;s been around long enough to know better. ESQ: Why do you think he did it? MS: He&amp;#039;s trying to find something to put down on that plate so his food doesn&amp;#039;t slide around and I think he kind of said, I&amp;#039;m not at my restaurant, I&amp;#039;m not serving four-star food \u2014 I&amp;#039;m at a fair. But even though you&amp;#039;re at a fair, you&amp;#039;re at a fair where you&amp;#039;re trying to become the next Iron Chef. ESQ: People seemed to think that the one-minute handicap wasn&amp;#039;t much of a setback. Do you think one minute is really that big of a deal? MS: I think it&amp;#039;s bigger than people sitting at home realize. Sometimes a minute is really the difference between success and failure. There are times when you finish with ten seconds left, and one extra minute could&amp;#039;ve meant everything. You almost have to think of it as a sporting-event type of atmosphere: A football game is sixty minutes long. Think of how many games could be won or lost if the team had one more minute? ESQ: Duskie Estes is no more after this week&amp;#039;s show. What do you think happened with her?  MS: Cooking fair-style food \u2014 I think that&amp;#039;s one of the things that really threw Duskie for a loop. Here&amp;#039;s a chef that is so driven by farm-to-table food. ESQ: You weren&amp;#039;t digging her grilled calamari gyro?  MS: I mean, I had less of a problem with it than some of the other judges. It was a little clunky, and while the calamari was cooked properly, it lacked a little bit of balance. I think, unfortunately for Duskie, she couldn&amp;#039;t find her footing in this competition. I think technique and execution are the whole battle in Iron Chef. And it stinks that she got eliminated because she really is one of the chefs whose food I look forward to trying every week. ESQ: Do you think Alton Brown looked sharp or like a used-car salesman in his latest outfit? MS: I think AB is a very snappy dresser.  ESQ: A last and somewhat unrelated question: What do you think of all the recent controversy over the Michelin restaurant ratings? MS: The whole Michelin thing \u2014 sometimes I just don&amp;#039;t really understand it. There&amp;#039;s a lot that goes into how they judge it. Much more than just the food goes into it \u2014 so it is a really hard system for a chef to follow. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a8790/next-iron-chef-season-3-episode-4-102510/>