Cooking Duel: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

[[I Thought It Meant|Just to be clear,]] [[Tropes Are Flexible|does not have to actually involve cooking]], it just has to be that silly.

And of course, as anybody who regularly watches [[Food Network]] can tell you, there are also the shows that are literally nothing more than straight-up cooking duels between two people. And ''of course'' they [[Iron Chef|originate]] from Japan. And, oddly enough, many of the above-described subtropes still apply (less the harem tendencies).

 

 

Compare [[Chef of Iron]].

** Similarily, Frontier has "You Want Fries With That." It's regarded as one of the best episodes, as it focuses on JP, Zoey, and Tommy who were otherwise forgotten.

* ''[[Kujibiki Unbalance]]'' is set at a [[High School]] where the student body is set up in an enormous [[Tournament Arc]] of [[Cooking Duel|Cooking Duels]]. (The first of which is literally a cooking duel.)

* Manga example: Jan Akiyama, from ''[[Iron Wok Jan]]'', deliberately attempts to make everything around him into a [[Cooking Duel]] -- his catchphrase is "Cooking is about winning".

* The game of tag that opens ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]''.

* Ginta vs. Tsutomu at tennis in ''[[Marmalade Boy]]'' (the loser had to shave his head).

** And in the first seven manga volumes, a much crueler Yami Yugi would make these up on the spot to challenge anyone who pissed him off/hurt his friends with. They were typically much darker and dangerous than other examples of this trope (example: challenging a crooked shopkeeper to a contest of "draw the coins out of the sneaker with a deadly scorpion inside it").

* ''[[Hikaru no Go]]'' likewise milks the traditional Japanese board game of go for all the drama they can get. In fairness, some people in [[Real Life]] make their living playing the game.

** Ditto for ''[[Kaiji]]''.

* ''[[The Legend of Koizumi]]'' is a series in which world leaders battle over the fate of the world... '''WITH MAHJONG'''.

** However, he did duel an enemy cook in the manga. Only, it was a real fight.

*** In one such duel, he manages to win, despite using only the ingredient scraps remaining from his opponent's recipes.

* Spoofed in ''[[The Slayers]]'', where the main characters must dress up in animal costumes and pass several ridiculous tests in order to reach the top of an enchanted tower, one of which is an actual cooking battle in which the [[Our Demons Are Different|mazoku]] Xelloss (who elects to flamboyantly clothe himself for the occasion in a frilly cap and apron) creates such a deliberately noxious concoction -- after all, it's a cooking ''duel'', right? -- that he almost kills them all with the fumes, and then wonders why he loses even though he created exactly what he aimed for. The price of losing these contests is being turned into adorably [[Chibi|chibified]] dolls, which is the sort of thing you grow to expect from this series. The characters tend to [[Lampshade Hanging|hang lampshades]] on this quite forcefully as they protest the unfairness (and the ridiculousness) of it all.

** The other challenges fall in this category. The next one was an Octopus and a game of rock paper scissors...where the octopus did them all at once. The third was a game of tag, where you had to grab someone by the butt, and the opponent was a snake. That one was funny.

** In ''NEXT'' Lina and Martina had a game of magic tennis for the prize. At least the game moved them to a truce and Xelloss got some [[Emotion Eater|tasty]] mayhem...

* ''[[Prince of Tennis]]'' has no [[Cooking Duel]], but it DOES have an entire mini arc devoted to an eating duel between the various rival teams.

* ''[[Naruto]]'' had a literal [[Cooking Duel]] in one of its many, ''many'' [[Filler]] episodes.

* ''[[Galaxy Fraulein Yuna]]'' takes this to even sillier extremes: the opening scene is a ''literal'' cooking duel between giant mecha! The protagonist wins by cooking eggs by the heat of atmospheric re-entry.

* [[Real Bout High School]], an anime series about a school where all of the student clubs are dedicated to ''fighting with lethal weapons'', features a [[Cooking Duel]] between the female leads for the affection of a male student. {{spoiler|Both lunches make him sick enough to vomit grey foam.}}

* [[Kannagi]], from which the image above is taken, has a cooking contest between Nagi, Tsugumi, and Zange.

* Some of [[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'s first volume takes this approach to a dodgeball game.

* [[Seto no Hanayome]] has an ''epic'' singing contest between Lunar and Sun. Their rival fan clubs turn the school into a war zone.

* ''[[Shina Dark]]'' manages to make a [[Cooking Duel]] out of [http://www.onemanga.com/Shina_Dark/8/06/ bartering.]

* An episode of [[Koihime Musou]] had an ''eating'' contest. And one of the participants was a professional eating competitor.

** Another had a three-part duel which included intellect competition (designed for monkeys) and cosplay competition.

* In ''[[Princess Tutu]]'', nearly everything is decided by ballet ([[Captain Obvious|I bet you couldn't tell from the title]]). Many of the dances actually ''don't'' fall under this trope since they aren't duels, instead focusing on characters revealing their true feelings through dance. But there's several that ''do'', including any sword fight in the series (which usually mixes ballet moves with sword fighting), and the first season's finale where the titular [[Magical Girl]] and her [[Dark Magical Girl]] rival end up dancing to determine who gains control of the Prince.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* One important plot element in the ''[[Apprentice Adept]]'' series by [[Piers Anthony]] is the main character contending to win the prize in a competition known simply as "The Game" or "The Tourney." The contestants could end up in any potentially competitive contest; it could be something as conventionally sportsmanlike as running a marathon, or something as seemingly undramatic as blowing soap bubbles. A [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade is hung]] over any situation that calls for it, pointing out that the rules of the game involve an element of luck that can lead to unusual results. In at least one case (a "friendly," rather than part of the Tourney) it was an actual [[Cooking Duel]], with humorous results given that neither contestant needed to eat, or had any idea what chocolate brownies were ''supposed'' to be like.

* In [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s Mad Amos short story ''Witchen Woes'', Mad Amos has a literal [[Cooking Duel]] (a chili cookoff) with a kitchen witch as a kind of exorcism.

** The best part about that was when the {{spoiler|princess who hit her uncle over the head with it, turning him into a poached egg, is found to be the rightful wielder}} the big, manly fighters/knights/barbarians insist on finishing the duel because they were "really looking forward to it." The one man's chocolate cake made with a helmet and baked in a shield is actually delineated in his own words in the back of the collection, parenthetically translated for modern-style cooking of course.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Numerous [[Game Show|Game Shows]] and [[Reality Show|Reality Shows]] are more or less entire series of literal Cooking Duels -- in live action, to boot.

** ''[[Iron Chef]]'' (which is technically the [[Trope Codifier]]) and its [[Cultural Translation|Americanized]] [[Spin-Off]] ''[[Iron Chef America]]''

** Food Network runs or has run several other [[Cooking Duel]]-based shows, such as ''Throwdown'', where Bobby Flay challenges another famous chef at his own specialty, and ''Date Plate'', where two guys compete for a date with a hot woman by cooking her dinner.

** ''Ready Steady Cook'' (''Ready.. Set... Cook!'' in the USA) - Debuted in Britain in 1994, USA in 1995, independant of any [[Iron Chef]] populairty (1993 in Japan, then to the USA a few years later). Two chefs each team up with a normal person, receive a mystery bag of ingredients and have to prepare a meal with it.

** And ''[[Chopped]]'' which takes the secret ingredient concept from ''[[Iron Chef]]'' and multiplies it.

* Numerous reality shows, like ''America's Next Top Model'', would also fit this trope.

* ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' had several of these, frequently between the boys as a group and the girls as a group.

** ''[[Kamen Rider W]]'' did this in their [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|Hyper Battle Video]]. Philip was hungry and the enemy was food-based, so his 3 allies had a cooking duel with him as the judge to find out what the enemy was made of. The announcer from [[Iron Chef]] was there as a gadget giving commentary. Notably, none of this made any logical sense at all (but then, the Hyper Battle Videos are non-canon anyway.)

* Another Toku example, Tama-chan and Chukaen's cook-off in ''[[Tomica Hero Rescue Fire]]'' Episode 10.

* [[The Odd Couple]] episode ''They Use Horseradish, Don't They?'' had Oscar helping Felix in a cooking contest when Felix's back went out due to the stress of the competition.

* More on the silly side and less on the dramatic, the various contests on ''[[Top Gear]]'' could qualify. Jeremy, James, and Richard will take part in competitions involving cars that often involve some odd regulations, such as "You are given £2000 to spend on a car and insurance as if you are 17 and buying your first. You are then to drive to X location while asserting why your car is better, spend the remainder of your money on modding your car to make it cooler, drive up to "your parent's house" at night without waking them, and impress some teenage girls with a handbrake turn. Whoever has the most points at the end wins."

*** He drank what appeared to be an entire bottle of wine, to boot.

* The show [[Future Food]] has a competition in every episode.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* [[Monkey Ninja Pirate Monkey]], using the [[Prose Descriptive Quality]] system by [[Atomic Sock Monkey]] can take almost anything into a duel, and even uses a cooking contest as an example.

* Feuds between samurai in ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'' are typically solved with whatever skill the parcipants are trained in - swords for bushi, magic for shugenja and so forth. However, as samurai are expected to have knowledge in the courtly arts, the challenger may suggest more or less whatever he or she likes. Thus one can settle a feud through a flower-arranging battle. This does tend to cost the challenger some face, though, as onlookers think less of their martial abilities.

* In ''RISUS'', anything can be a "fight", explicitly so, as long as it's [[Rule of Cool|entertaining]] or [[Rule of Funny|funny]].

* [[Dungeons and Dragons]] Oriental Adventures campaign setting has a rule for official and unofficial contests in any proficiency appropriate for the situation, such as calligraphy or falconry. Winning or losing such challenges gives or takes a Honor point and the winner receives XP bonus proportional to the host's level, doubled for official competitions.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==

* [[Older Than Radio]]: In [[Gilbert and Sullivan|Gilbert & Sullivan]]'s ''The Grand Duke'', there is a "statutory duel", whereby the winner is determined by playing a children's card game.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The Playstation game ''[[Suikoden II]]'' included a minigame with cooking duels between your army chef Hai Yo and various wandering chefs, including the two army chefs from the first ''[[Suikoden]]'' game. Complete with the twirling of weapons, the leaps of agility, and the bursts of energy from some of the opponents.

** Including a battle with ''slime'' as the secret ingredient.

** ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' also gets one of these, putting the party member of your choice up against [[Lethal Chef|Flynn]] to earn cooking titles for your party members.

* A character with a high enough Wisdom in [[Neverwinter Nights]] Tales of Arterra can bypass one test by telling the one-handed evil spirit who has been instructed to prove his is better than you that you are better at clapping your hands than he is.

* Then there's the [[Monkey Island]] series. No, not [[You Fight Like a Cow|those duels]]. This is about the {{spoiler|Banjo Duel}}. The kicker? {{spoiler|You have to cheat to win.}}

* Many of the text-based mini-quests in ''[[Space Rangers]]'' can be seen as this. They're not always one-on-one duels (usually it's a four-way contest), but when a planetary government asks you to win a pizza-baking contest on some far away planet...

* Mario Party, anyone? Where to start: Don't look in the same direction as the opponent, blow a balloon between opponents' cars, walk on a ball and bump into the other to throw them away from the platform, shake a soda, and so on.

 

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[Pucca]]'' has cooking duel death courses, restaurant fights, and otherwise a whole new level of passion for the culinary arts.

** The difference between the patties was that Spongebob cared for his patty (literally, tucking it into a lettuce bed and everything) and Poseidon used his magical god-of-the-sea merman powers to whip up a thousand patties as quickly as possible. So it's more like a cooking aesop where love = good food, processed meats produced cheaply in large quantity = icky food, even if they look the same.

*** I shall never eat fast food again.

** The episode "Fry Cook Games" has Spongebob and Patrick compete in fry-cooking themed athletic events like ice-cream high-diving and bun wrestling.

* In ''[[Futurama]]'', Bender is an aspiring chef. Unfortunately as a robot he has no taste buds and is appalling. But once he entered into a chef duel with the famous Elzar, and won by using a magical ingredient. It was ordinary tap water... {{spoiler|laced with nothing more than a few tablespoons of LSD.}}

* ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'' had Courage facing off with a demon that possessed Muriel...with thumb war.

* In the comic strip ''Lucky Luke: Calamity Jane'' from 1967, Jane gets involved in a baking contest with the equally unqualified matron of the establishment, the unlucky witnesses have to eat the results at gunpoint.

* This makes up much of the plot of the second [[Strawberry Shortcake]] special ("...in Big Apple City").

* ''[[South Park]]'' has had dance-offs, whore-offs, virtual Yahtzee, and the "Hell's Kitchen Nightmares Iron Top Chef Cafeteria Throwdown Ultimate Cookoff Challenge," among other crap (literally).

* ''[[Home Movies]]'' - Brendon and Jason play an attorney and his romantic rival who first square off with plastic swords, which break, so naturally...