Arts & Entertainment

Saul Bolton and Bobby Flay Throwdown

The chef of Boerum Hill restaurant Saul is on "Throwdown with Bobby Flay"

Have you ever eaten a Baked Alaska? The delectable dessert is often set on fire.

Saul Bolton of on Smith Street, the 6-time Michelin Star winning artisanal fine-dining establishment, makes a variation on the Baked Alaska that is so popular he has had to keep on the menu for many years.

Bolton's Baked Alaska is so renowned he was staked-out -- and duped -- by the producers of "Throwdown with Bobby Flay," the popular Food Network TV show.

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"Bobby Flay and I go mano y mano," said Bolton. "I'm making, according to me, the best Baked Alaska in the world and he's ready to knock me off the top of the mountain."

Bolton wouldn't (and can't, he signed a contract) say who won the contest, which was filmed late last year.

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Bolton's Baked Alaska is made with a chocolate oreo cookie crust, a layer of coffee parfait and vanilla parfait, then topped with Italian meringue and rum caramel.

The producers of the show went to great lengths to trick Bolton into thinking he was just doing a desserts show. They filmed Bolton over the course of a few days in November, each time with a different live audience that Bolton had to recruit himself.

"The cool part is how unaware I was that it was happening," he said. 

After days of filming under "intense lights" at Bolton's house, Saul and the Carroll Gardens greenmarket, Flay showed up during filming at Bolton's other restaurant; the Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights.

"We were just getting into it when who walks into the dining room?" Bolton joked.

"Yeah I'm ready to throwdown," he remembered thinking.

But Bolton wasn't nervous.

"You just switch into game mode," he said. "I've been cooking for a long time."

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Watch Bolton v. Flay on Wednesday, April 13 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT.


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