Ultimate Recipe Showdown Season 3 Premiere
Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown premieres on March 14 at 10:00 p.m., hosted by Guy Fieri. Ultimate Recipe Showdown is a home cooking competition series featuring viewers of Food Network. Over 12,000 recipes were submitted out of which 24 recipes of prospective participants were chosen for this season’s competition. The chosen home cooks have an opportunity to feature their favorite recipe, whether the recipe is an adapted recipe, a recipe passed down from generation to genration or an inspired original recipe that is a favorite of friends and family alike.
The six week competition features recipes in the following categories: Burgers, Cakes, Comfort Food, Desserts, Hot and Spicy, or Hometown Favorites. The top recipes chosen for each category compete each week for top honors, a prize of $25,000 and the chance to have his or her recipe on the menu nationwide at T.G.I. Friday’s® restaurants.
Ever wonder where famous chefs eat when they aren’t working? The Best Thing I Ever Ate lets you in on restaurants, holes-in-the-wall, cafes, diners, famous eateries and little known places chefs eat at that feature delicious, one-of-a-kind food favored by famous chefs. 
Tony visits near his own home in Hudson Valley, New York. His guide Rick owns a local inn. Tony and Rick sail on Rick’s sailboat as Tony tells the viewers the history of the Hudson river, apparently a super highway during the industrial revolution to the local mills, docks and river ports. As they sail Tony sees a floating hot dog stand, “Dick’s Dogs”. Tony calls it “the greatest vessel on the river”. They buy hot dogs and dig in. Rick lives in Indian Point, a town that seems to have stopped in time years ago. Living is old fashioned here, the growth of the town stopped when a nuclear power plant was built near the town. At Indian Point Rick takes Tony to catch blue crab for their crab boil meal. Apparently all you do is lower a crab pot from the dock, pull it up and it is always stuffed with blue crabs. The blue crabs are boiled in a pot and readied for the meal. As Tony exclaims “this is delicious” eating their fill of blue crabs, a geiger counter sound plays in the background calculating radiation.
This two hour Man v. Food special comes from Miami live celebrating the superbowl. Adam Richman throws a massive tailgate party in Miami in the parking lot of Alexander Hotel in South Beach, the site of Shula’s Steakhouse. Adam visits with his fans, eating tailgate food and taking on the monstrous Shula’s 48 oz. steak challenge live on TV at the end of the show. Fans are dressed in Man v. Food t-shirts and a few fans are dressed in pizza, hot dog and steak costumes. The show features two sports announcers who treat the show as a football game, while cheerleaders in full garb are cheering for Adam. Television viewers were able to vote on the best “Fan v. Food” challenge photos online of Man v. Food fans, shown with a mega food challenge of their own.
Tony Bourdain visits Prague in this episode. As he looks through market stalls at various cooked foods he proclaims “In Prague, pork is king. Welcome to Porkopolis”.
Chef Gordon Ramsay is known for his popular Hell’s Kitchen series on FOX where he puts upcoming young chefs through culinary challenges with the grand prize a chef position in one of his world famous restaurants. Chef Ramsay was so popular with audiences FOX gave him a second show called Kitchen Nightmares. Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares are American adaptations of British reality shows that also starred chef Ramsay. 
Tony visits Brittany, France in this episode. Tony exclaims the shades of blue in the water there are far more beautiful than the descriptions he’s heard of or the water shown in famous paintings of the region. Tony meets up with famous chef Olivier Roellinger. Tony can barely keep up with chef Olivier, who dives into the local farmers market. Chef Olivier decided as a young man to become a chef after a near death experience, ever since the chef has been obsessed with food. Tony and the chef go to his hotel/restaurant Les Maisons de Bricourt and visit the chef’s bakery that provides the restaurant with fresh breads. Here they sample pork products with the bread including sausage and pate. The chef raises his own pigs in the back of the hotel that provide the pork products. Tony smiles at the pork products and says “best pork porn ever”.
In this episode Tony Bourdain travels to Istanbul. Tony tells the viewers “Turkey has always been a mystery to me” and has no preconceptions of the country as he arrives in Istanbul. He finds the streets clean, sophisticated food available and young and hip people milling through the streets. Tony admits since Istanbul is Muslim and a dry country with no ready alcohol, he overdid it on the plane coming over. 
The new season of Anthony Bourdain No Reservations begins with Tony wearing a bullet-proof vest, surrounded by Panama state police using machetes to break open kilos of cocaine. As Tony watches the destruction he quips “somewhere an aging supermodel is crying.”
Food Network has a new show set on Friday night, it is a chef challenge show pitting two Food Network chefs against new contestants every week. The show takes place in different cities across the country. The Food Network chefs challenge local foodies to a contest of skill, speed and wit as they take on a variety of food contests with one team as the ultimate winner of the episode. 
