If you haven't seen the show, Iron Chef is a Japanese variety/cooking show of sorts. Known in Japan as "Ryori no Tetsujin" (Cooking Iron Man), it is produced by Fuji International TV. It started airing in 1993 as a half hour show. After 10 shows were aired, FujiTV Japan knew it had a winner and expanded it to a one hour format. The show ended its weekly run in Japan in September 1999. Specials (2 hours shows typically taped outside of the Kitchen Stadium) are still being produced at the rate of 4-5 a year. The weekly shows are no longer being filmed. There are almost 300 weekly shows that were produced.
The concept of the show is that a flamboyant gourmand, portrayed by Kaga Takeshi, lives in his castle with his "Iron Chefs." These Iron Chefs are the top chefs in the culinary fields of Japanese, Chinese, French and Italian cooking. Each week, Kaga will choose a challenger chef (from anywhere on the planet) to "do battle" against his Iron Chefs. Kaga will present a theme ingredient and each chef will then be charged with preparing a multi-course meal that utilizes the theme ingredient in each course. The chefs have one hour to cook. Then, Kaga and four judges taste the food and pronounce winner. Sometimes there are ties and a 30 minute cook-off battle, with its own theme ingredient, will need to be held. Every now and again, there will be shows with no theme ingredient or tag team chefs cooking.
The great appeal of the show is its meld of sports commentary with a cooking show. There is a sidelines announcer, Ota Shinichiro, who provides a play by play commentary on the dishes as they are prepared. There are also two announcers, Fukui Kenjiro, who provides most of the announcements and Hattori Yukio, who is the "color" man and fills in the viewers with tidbits of culinary knowledge. Hattori runs the Hattori School of Nutrition, a cooking school founded by his father, which is why Hattori is so knowledgeable about food.
Meet the Iron Chefs
The Current Iron Chefs
Chin
Kenichi from a photo in his
restaurant
Chinese Iron Chef Chin/Chen Kenichi - He's the current Chinese Iron Chef in the yellow outfit and has been with the show from the
start. His father, Chin Kenmin, was known for his sauces, as is Chin Kenichi. Frequently on the show, Chin will make his special chili bean sauce as a stir fry. He's also known for making fried rice in the last five minutes of a
battle. Chin has been with the show since its creation and is the only remaining original Iron Chef.
He's naturally good humored and is best known for the goofy faces he
makes. Chin's restaurant is in Asakasa. Chin is
also known as Chen. Chin is the Japanese pronunciation of his name whereas
Chen is the Chinese one. The translators of the show seen on the Food
Network have decided to use the Chinese pronunciations. Chin is
married and has two adult sons.
Sakai Hiroyuki
as seen in a billboard ad
French Iron Chef (II) Sakai Hiroyuki- He's the current French Iron Chef who wears the red outfit. Sakai is the second French chef and started at the beginning of
1994 after Ishinabe retired. He cooks at the French restaurant,
La Rochelle
(the restaurant's website), which offers a great view of Tokyo from its 32nd floor location. The restaurant's name is from a city in France where Sakai spent some
time (as revealed in the France Showdown special). Sakai is known as a lady killer in Japan and he is often called the
"Delacroix of French cuisine" because of the beautiful way in which his dishes are presented.
Sakai is a member of the Club des Trente, an
organization of French chefs in Japan (there is another group of younger chefs, Club Mistral,
who have been on the show and challenged Sakai a few times). The Club des
Trente also has, in its membership, retired French Iron Chef Ishinabe and many of the French chefs who have
been challengers on Iron Chef are also members, including Jo Etsuo (Battle
Wine).
Kobe Masahiko
photo by Mitch Sako
Italian Iron Chef Kobe Masahiko - Kobe is the Italian Iron Chef, introduce sometime in spring of 1997. When Iron Chef began airing in 1993, it was the hope of Kaga to have four Iron Chefs. The young (then 23) chef Kobe was known to be a bit wild and undisciplined. Kobe went to study Italian cuisine overseas on Florence, Italy for 4 years. When Kaga felt that he had matured and developed his skills, Kobe came back to Japan to join the Iron Chefs. He wears a multi-color red, white and green outfit. He is still an Iron Chef though he doesn't appear often (he doesn't even have a platform with the other Iron
Chefs (see note below)). In fact, since Kobe has his own platform, he usually only appears when specifically requested for a battle.
This changed in the Millennium special (aired Jan 5, 2000 in Japan). Kobe
was with the other three Iron Chefs. The main reason for his sudden promotion
was that Kobe finally opened (or was to open at the time of the taping) his own restaurant, Ristorante
Massain February of 2000. With
his own place, Kobe was finally senior enough to appear on equal par with the
older, more experienced Iron Chefs. Kobe is married and was born in 1970.
Morimoto Masaharu
Japanese Iron Chef (III) Morimoto Masaharu - Morimoto is the third Japanese Iron Chef. Known as the "Silver Iron
Chef", his debut battle was aired in Japan on
2/27/98. Morimoto is different
than previous Japanese Iron Chefs since he's spent most of his culinary career in the United
States and experiments with fusion cuisine. He was the head chef of Nobu in New
York City, until November 2000. He has plans to open his first place, "Morimoto
Masaharu" in Philadelphia with future plans for restaurants in New York
City and Los Angeles. Because of Morimoto's US connection, there's an American flag on the back of Morimoto's outfit.
He also sports an earring, which is unusual for the Japanese. Morimoto actually started out playing baseball but switched to cooking after an
injury. He is married to Keiko Morimoto and was born February 26, 1955. PapaTime, a Japanese show,
had a 45 minutes segment on Morimoto and the time he spent in Yamaguchi, growing
up. The video can be seen with RealAudio
(it's all in Japanese). If you've ever wondered about the brightly colored
chef attire Morimoto sports when he's not in his Iron Chef digs, you can get
them at ChefWear.
