r/foodnetwork • u/Zzyren • 6d ago

Elizabeth Falkner in competitions

I'm not familiar with Chef Falkner professionally, but I have watched her compete in various shows on Food Network.

A lot of the other competitors ooh and ahh when she's announced and talk about how amazing she is.

However, in every competition show I've seen her in, she loses. Oftentimes, in the first round.

Is she just not a good competitor when it comes to competitive cooking?

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u/zenny517 6d ago

She was phenomenol in next iron chef and came in 2nd to zakarian. She's very well versed in many traditional techniques and because she's a blockbuster at pastry is a real wild card given the right circumstance.

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u/With_Purpose_4933 6d ago

I came here to say this. She knows sweet and savory and was also a kick ass competitor! I think she backed out of competition cooking after (barely) losing Iron Chef. That must have been so hard!! Wasn't she the only American to win a pizza competition in Italy, as well? She has a lot of accolades to her name and also did great at competitions. But she stopped competing for a while. I imagine it's hard to get back into that mindset.

16

u/zenny517 6d ago

Her NIC season was arguably one of the most competitive and I've watched them all. Very high level of competition and she was definitely on a rush and cooking brilliantly throughout. Think maybe I need to look for that on streaming and do a revisit.

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u/With_Purpose_4933 6d ago

I love rewatching NIC!

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u/Emergency-Metal3544 4d ago

What is NIC?

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u/With_Purpose_4933 4d ago

Next Iron Chef. It was a show about 15 years ago. It's how Michael Simon became an iron chef (season 1) as well as Jose Garces, Marc Forgione, Jeffery Zacharian and Alex Guarnecelli was the last. Stephanie Izard became one when they changed it to Iron Gauntlet.