Exclusive behind the scenes interview of the Iron Chef Bobby Flay’s Throwdown

July 1, 12:37 PMCelebrity Chef ExaminerKimberly Raines

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Credit: FoodNetwork.com

Iron Chef Bobby Flay’s “Throwdown” is a wildly popular show on the Food Network. He finds the best of the best and proposes a challenge to beat them at their own signature dish. Of course, the unsuspecting opponents are unaware of this until after Bobby arrives. I talked exclusively with Rick Colucci about him and his brother, head chef Rocco Colucci’s, experience with the show. These two outspoken brothers own the very popular 4 Brothers Bistro in West Falmouth, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. They are the nationwide kings of home-style meatloaf. Check out their recipe. The question and answer session was both surprising and fun!

So, first of all, did you see the Throwdown coming?
Not at all. We thought we were shooting a special, and we almost backed out. We were running two restaurants plus a bunch of other things… we were just tired. The shooting went for three days, and Bobby showed up and strolled in the last morning.

When you found out it was a Throwdown with Bobby Flay, were you nervous?
Oh, yeah! Very nervous… not about being on TV, but we were kind of ticked. We thought we were about to made fools of. What if we lost? But the crew and Bobby promised us, win or lose, it would be good for our business. Anyway, we won, of course!

How was Bobby Flay?
Bobby was awesome, a stand-up guy, incredibly cool and made us feel comfortable. So did the rest of the filming crew… a great group of people. Bobby even stayed around for a few hours after the shoot and had a few beers with us and talked food. He took the time to take as many pictures as people wanted, gave hugs--really cool and down to earth guy.

So I noticed some banter going on between you guys and Bobby? Was he a good sport?
Ha ha ha ha… yes. To be honest, at first Rocco and I were trying to be more conservative. We did not want to come off as idiots on national TV. Then, the producer stopped shooting and told us to just be ourselves. So we let loose. We gave Bobby hell about being a Yankees fan... you know how we Sox fans feel about the Yankees! We gave him hell about his meatloaf... you name it, we threw it his way. A lot of the joking around was edited out of the show. The shooting took a while, so there is no way they could have included everything. It was a lot of fun.

How was Bobby’s meatloaf? Were you worried?
Bobby’s meatloaf was good. Different, you know, he is an Iron Chef, so he had to use all these different ingredients to chef it up. Our meatloaf is good old home style. I think trying to compare the two was difficult. They were two different things.

Is your meatloaf the most popular thing on the menu?
Are you kidding me? By far… people come from all over the country to eat it. It is amazing. Rocco goes through about 100 pounds of ground beef each week. We are world famous for our meatloaf because of the show.

So is the Colucci Brothers Diner still open?
No, we closed the diner. We now have a restaurant called 4 Brothers Bistro.

Anything you want to add about your experience?
Just that we would do it again in a second. It has been the highlight of our career, and it was a great time. It gave us our 15 minutes of fame, so to say. Really glad we did not back out!

For more information, I urge you to Read all about the Colucci brothers and check out their other mouth-watering dishes!