Borgata Tells All Other Atlantic City Casinos: Our Chefs Can Beat Up Your Chefs

We forgive you if you’ve never been to The Water Club at Borgata to eat. Relaxing by the divinely decadent pool, soaking up some pampering at Immersion Spa or doing naughty things you’d care not to remember in the penthouse suite–yes, these are the reasons to wander over to the opulent spa-hotel from its adjoining sister property. But as of Sunday (spoiler alert!), that may all change.

You see, Geoffrey Zakarian, the “Culinary Lifestyle Consultant” (whatever the hell that is) for the Borgata’s Water Club, has won the title of Iron Chef in the fourth season finale of The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs, scheduled to air 9 pm Sunday on the Food Network. He joins two other Iron Chefs–Bobby Flay and Wolfgang Puck–who’ve already put their stamp on the Borgata.

We know, Bobby and Wolfie both own actual restaurants at Borgata, whereas guests at The Water Club are all supposed to subsist on air and harp music. So how exactly does Zakarian oversee food operations there? Well, aside from catered functions, there are three ways for the public to eat at The Water Club – something you’d best do quickly, before hotel execs jack up prices with an “Iron Chef privilege tax.”

First, The Immersion Spa offers “a specially prepared spa cuisine menu” that gets delivered to you at the lap pool at the time reserved with the concierge–who also helps you in “selecting and ordering your meal” (because, apparently, you are asked to check your brain at the door along with your valuables). Second, the rainforest-like Sunbar in the lobby serves tapas-style nibbles for those basking in the glow of good health. And third, the room service attendants are only too happy to deliver a meal or a morning pot of post-merriment coffee to your penthouse suite for the princely pre-Iron Chef sum of $14 per pot.

Damn.

In addition to his (questionable) duties at The Water Club, Zakarian also helms about a billion other restaurants in New York and Miami–as, of course, do Puck and Flay. And while we certainly congratulate Borgata for its culinary good fortune and bragging rights, what we really want to see is for Michael Schulson (who also has a restaurant at Borgata called Izakaya but, with Sampan on 13th Street, carries a bit more local cred than Flay with his West Philly Burger Palace) to beat out the remaining Borgata restaurateurs by becoming the next next Iron Chef with an A.C. address–mostly so we in Philly don’t have to drive an hour or get a seaweed facial to experience his culinary art.