History Main / CookingDuel

* ''Anime/YuGiOh'' and ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' frequently stake the lives of the characters, or even the fate of the world, on a collectible card game.

* This concept is sent up in one of Etna's [[TrailersAlwaysLie highly inaccurate previews of the next episode]] in ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea}}'', with the Prinny Squad as the secret ingredient.
** Before Nippon Ichi hit it big with games like Disgaea, they made a whole game based on literal cooking duels called Cooking Fighter.

* An episode of the ''Series/{{Alf}}'' SpinOff ''Alf Tales'' changes John Henry from a steel-drivin' man to a celebrity chef who competes against a machine that synthesizes food.

** ''Ready Steady Cook'' (''Ready.. Set... Cook!'' in the USA) - Debuted in Britain in 1994, USA in 1995, independent of any IronChef 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.

[[IThoughtItMeant Just to be clear]], [[TropesAreFlexible does not have to actually involve cooking]], it just has to be that silly.

* Many of the text-based mini-quests in ''SpaceRangers'' 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...

** ''Ready Steady Cook'' (''Ready.. Set... Cook!'' in the USA) - Debuted in Britain in 1994, USA in 1995, independant of any IronChef 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.

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

** Yet another ''SpongeBobSquarePants'' ep tells the same story.

* TheOddCouple 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.

-->''Cucumber:'' Uh, Nautilus, I kind of think we have more important things to-
-->''Nautilus:'' NO CUCUMBER

* TabletopGame/UnknownArmies wants players to realize just how dumb engaging in lethal violence can be and suggests methods to avoid it. One of those, Rechannel, involves substitution of another competition for violence. The main book suggests drinking contests, cards, scavenger hunts, arm wrestling - really, anything with a clear winner and loser can do. Imagine the GM when a character offers to settle a feud with an NPC with winner-takes-all Hungry Hungry Hippos.

* Tendo Souji was not only the title character and TheAce of ''KamenRiderKabuto'', but also a genius chef. Naturally, this meant that any feud he had with another character would inevitably come down to a cooking duel. A short two-episode arc called "The Dark Kitchen" took this premise to its logical, yet highly absurd conclusion.

** Also, in RealLife, ''KamenRiderBLACK'' star Tetsuo Kurata is a master steak chef, beating ''KamenRiderBlade'' star Takayuki Tsubaki [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hfumi9_Pkc in an episode of a cookoff show.]]
** ''KamenRiderDouble'' did this in their [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment 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 IronChef 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.)

* The show FutureFood has a competition in every episode.

** And ''{{Chopped}}'' which takes the secret ingredient concept from ''IronChef'' and multiplies it.

* ''Manga/ ShokugekiNoSoma'' has cooking duels or shokugeki to settle disputes. You can even challenge the alumnus!

This time, instead of [[BareFistedMonk fists]], [[SwordFight swords]] or [[WizardDuel overpowered fireballs]], the combatants can find themselves squaring off through an impromptu contest in some sufficiently quirky task over a perceived slight to one's honor or that of a love interest. While DuelsDecideEverything, in {{Anime}} ''anything'' can be a duel -- and in ComedySeries, it usually is. Especially when KidSamurai and HeirToTheDojo characters with touchy senses of honor are involved. Alternatively, the AlphaBitch could provoke a less excitable character into such a contest.

* ''KoeDeOshigoto'' has an [[AudioErotica erotic voice acting]] contest (it's [[WidgetSeries that kind of series]]) between Kanna and Fumika with one particularly timid and reserved colleague as their target. They themselves don't take too seriously, unlike resident HotBlooded pervert Sakanami, who suggested the whole thing in the first place.

* In the ''Franchise/StarTrek ExpandedUniverse'' novel ''Literature/HowMuchForJustThePlanet'' by Creator/JohnMFord, Scotty gets challenged to a duel by a Klingon security officer. He chooses "the ancestral weapon of the Scots" -- that is, golf.

* Every single Franchise/Pokemon game ever. What does an individual risk in a battle between his pokemon, other than that what he stakes on it? The pokemon always are [[DeathIsCheap easily brought back]], and never are a risk to the trainer's life, even ''if the combatants are gangsters or want to destroy the world or something of that nature.''

[[folder:Videogames]]

* The cover for the Nov. 17, 2003 issue of ''The New Yorker'', drawn by Gary Larson, has two men in front of a Wild West saloon putting about ten paces between each other to see who will be the faster to draw... a caricature of the other on their easel.

** The first tried deciding who got godchildren through tiddly winks, [[EyeScream but it was too painful]].