In this Iron Chef corner... Montreal's Hughes!

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Hughes and Flay are all smiles before the opening-round bell. (FOOD NETWORK CANADA)

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Hughes gets down to business. (FOOD NETWORK CANADA)

TORONTO -- Montreal chef Chuck Hughes has to keep a lid on the details of his Iron Chef America TV battle against cooking giant Bobby Flay ahead of Sunday's broadcast on Food Network Canada.

But the charismatic, tattooed star of the series Chuck's Day Off does reveal that he adds a Canadian flair to his dishes in the pre-taped episode.

"I'm the eighth Canadian chef to go on Iron Chef, but I'm the first Quebecer and I'm the first guy from Montreal," Hughes said in a recent interview.

"I want people to be happy of what they saw and say: 'We're proud of this Montrealer and this Canadian and we think he did the best that he could do and he represented us well."'

At 34, Hughes is the youngest Canadian cook to compete on the series, in which chefs go up against the show's resident culinary masters to create five gourmet dishes using a secret ingredient. The winner of each episode is determined by a panel of judges.

If Hughes wins, he'll be just the second Canadian to have his cuisine "reign supreme," as they say, on Iron Chef America (Vancouver's Rob Feenie was the first).

Other Canadian chefs who've battled but lost on the series, a spinoff of a Japanese cult hit, include Michael Smith and Lynn Crawford.

Hughes -- who focuses on simple comfort food at his Garde Manger restaurant -- said he was asked to be on the series last year and accepted because "it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You're not going to be invited again."

New York-born Flay was his first choice to compete against, even though no Canadian chef had beaten the guru of southwestern cuisine on the series before (Toronto's Susur Lee tied Flay in 2006).

"I chose Bobby Flay because of his record. He doesn't lose," said Hughes, whose series airs on Food Network in Canada and on the Cooking Channel in the U.S.

"There's Emeril (Lagasse) and then there's Bobby Flay and those guys are like demigods in the cooking world in the U.S. So to have the honour to battle Bobby Flay was amazing."

Hughes -- whose arms are adorned with tattoos of food items, including lobsters, shrimp and bacon -- took two of his Garde Manger cooking colleagues to help him in the competition last July in New York City.

Though they'd previously brainstormed on which dishes would work with virtually any secret ingredient (ravioli and risotto were among their ideas), they weren't married to their concepts, he said.

"The bottom line is that there's no real way to prepare for this."

Before entering the Kitchen Stadium studio, Hughes got to meet all the Iron Chef America personalities backstage and spent about 10 minutes alone with Flay.

"When I met him I said, 'Hi Bobby,' and my voice cracked a bit and I gave him an official (Montreal) Canadiens jersey, to which he replied: 'Thank you so much -- but it's not going to help,'" Hughes said with a laugh.

"He was very polite and very nice and he gave me some great words of encouragement, and not necessarily for the battle but mostly for life."

Once cameras started rolling and the secret ingredient was revealed, Hughes said he was "pleasantly surprised" with what it was.

"I actually kind of knew exactly where we were going to go with it, so it was kind of a perfect-case scenario."

Then the heat set in.

With every oven, light and burner on full blast, Hughes said he was "sweating buckets" and had to change his shirt during the battle.

Producers, who had warned him ahead of time to bring a second shirt, helped with the wardrobe change behind the scenes.

"They literally send a team like pit-crew style, rip the shirt off you, put another shirt on and say, 'OK, OK, OK, get back in there,"' he said.

"It's pretty intense."

Hughes said he was very vocal during the challenge, talking to the cameras and the show's commentators as he cooked.

"They're like, 'Is this guy for real? He never shuts up,"' he said with a laugh, noting he was "yelling in French" at one point.

"I'm thinking they're going to keep a little bit of the French in the show. I'm hoping because it's going to give it that special Quebecois feel."

Though Hughes can't reveal the outcome, he does admit he was surprised by it.

-- The Canadian Press

TV preview

Iron Chef America

Food Network Canada

Sunday at 9 p.m.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 19, 2011 G8