Things are going from bad to worse every day. You know all about it. Things are so bad that you have to turn it off. You stop your subscriptions, you ignore all the signs. It actually hurts to see so many people suffering and it makes you worry that you could be next. Your family could be in line at a soup kitchen or food line in the near future. More and more you hear about friends or relatives getting laid off. Some of them are even losing their homes. You see more and more charts with everything pointing down, tables and statistics all breaking records for a worsening trend of one sort or another. More and more foreigners are taking American jobs away, never to return, and more and more Americans losing their homes, many even committing suicide or worse. What could be worse than suicide? Suicide, and leaving one’s family penniless, that’s what.
The venerable Pump Room Restaurant in Chicago is once again a beacon of civilized living. Famously memorialized in the Frank Sinatra song ‘Chicago’, the ‘jumping Pump Room’ was one of the first true fine dining establishments to open in the Windy City at the end of Prohibition. Almost immediately, it became a favorite of celebrities including the biggest stars in entertainment history–Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe is just a very small list of the icons that made it a regular hangout. In the later part of the 20th century, however, it sort of fell off the map as a new wave of gourmet restaurants in the Windy City led by Charlie Trotter reduced it to a historical footnote.
The concept of the show is right out of professional wrestling, but there it is in living color every week on ‘The Food Network’. Prominent chefs from all over the world go ‘mano a mano’ in judged cooking competitions. That’s the premise of ‘Iron Chef’ which is easily the most entertaining cooking show in television history. Even non-foodies will enjoy the competition and the nearly inscrutable strangeness of the show.