Iron Wok Jan 8
Posted: December 25, 2007 Filed under: Iron Wok Jan Leave a comment »I kinda think the honeymoon is over for this series, but it’s still quite good. After one chapter that wraps up the Gobancho Spring Roll challenge, the story immediately moves into a new arc where the food critic once again tries to publicly disgrace Jan, this time by challenging him with a chef who seems to be well-acquainted with Chinese herbal remedies.
The battle takes place on television, and after the food critic sends over invitations to a new restaurant featuring the above chef in an exploding hog’s head cooked to perfection (the new restaurant where, incidentally, the asshole from a bit ago, Dan, was fired in favor of the new guy). Not one to back down from a challenge, Jan shows up to the welcoming ceremony in drag and brings over exploding heads in the likeness of the food critic and the chef. This was televised, so the restaurant decided to cast a televised showdown between the new chef and Jan in order to save their reputation.
Jan, of course, is cast as the devil in the ads. This seems to thrill him, and he quite enjoys playing the part at the actual competition.
The reason I say the honeymoon is over is just because I can see this particular story arc runs until at least volume 11 (which I don’t have), and I don’t really like the challenging chef very much… though he does try to rob Jan of his sense of taste right away, and it seems he gets more and more demonic as the competition wears on. I prefer the short Gobancho-oriented challenges to these long stories which introduce new characters. This series is still fantastic though, and I’ll probably still order the next ten volumes after the new year.
