Iron Chef Japanese joins local benefit

By Joan Namkoong
Advertiser Food Editor

Masaharu Morimoto represents Japan on TV's "Iron Chef" show.

Masaharu Morimoto, the silver-clad Iron Chef Japanese of TV Food Network's popular "Iron Chef" series, will be in Honolulu next month as a guest chef at the Big Brothers Big Sisters Annual Gourmet Affair benefit event. He'll be teamed with Hawai'i's popular chef Sam Choy, and the duo will present a multi-course dinner April 21 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel.

Morimoto is no stranger to Hawai'i: Like many Japanese nationals, he was married here 22 years ago.

"My wife wore the dress, I wore the tuxedo; we took the elevator to the lobby and tourists looked at us. We went to the botanical gardens and the American tourists cheered," he recalled in accented and halted English via telephone from New York last week.

"I couldn't speak English at the time: I couldn't even buy at McDonald's. In Japan, we say potato fry, not french fry; I didn't know the name Big Mac, so I ordered a plain hamburger."

A native of Hiroshima, Japan, Morimoto began his culinary career in a restaurant specializing in sushi and traditional kaiseki cuisine. At age 25, he opened his own restaurant and began exploring European and Western cooking ingredients and techniques as a way of distinguishing himself from his peers.

Five years later, Morimoto sold his restaurant and headed for New York.

That was 1985. He worked in a number of Japanese restaurants in Manhattan, and in 1993 he became the executive chef at the Sony Club, the Sony Corp.'s executive dining room, run by restaurateur Barry Wine of the four-star Quilted Giraffe. Here, he expanded his exposure to Western cooking and realized his dream of presenting Japanese food in a Western setting.

Soon he was recruited by Nobu Matsuhisa, a fellow countryman whose culinary repertoire reflected his travels to Chile, Peru and South America. Matsuhisa, whose Matsuhisa restaurant in Los Angeles was already well-established, was about to open Nobu in New York; Morimoto became executive chef.

By that time, Morimoto had been tapped to serve as the "Iron Chef Japanese," starting in 1998, even before the program went on the air in the United States. "I don't know why they chose me," he said. "Fuji Television was trying to do new things."

"Morimoto is considered the father of new or neo-Japanese food," said Don Fellner, Morimoto's friend and business partner in their company, Moridon. "That's probably why they chose him."

In the program aired on the Food Network, the challenging chef chooses which Iron Chef he will compete against from among four: Iron Chefs Italian, French, Chinese and Japanese.

A secret ingredient is presented and the dueling chefs create several dishes utilizing the ingredient. A panel of judges tastes and scores the dishes, ultimately proclaiming the winner.

"They give you five hints before you appear, but there's no preparation beforehand," said Morimoto. "The secret ingredient is known to the chef as it is unveiled on the set."

With a serious and focused demeanor and a diamond stud in his left ear, Morimoto has had to prove himself against formidable challengers, including New York chef Bobby Flay. "The challenger, aaah!, he is always doing the best he can," explained Morimoto.

"For me, being the Iron Chef from New York, I know what that means: The producer, the directors, they want me to do new things. I have to do new things, invent new things. The challenge is the ingredient, not the person."

Does Morimoto like being the Iron Chef? "No," he said flat out but with a laugh. "It's too much pressure and stress."

Morimoto will be opening his own "New Asian" style restaurant, Morimoto, in Philadelphia this summer. "He's developing a new approach to Asian food that will be distinctively Morimoto," said Fellner. "If you see his shows, he takes diverse elements and brings them together in a novel and compelling way."

"Working for Nobu, there would be eight people at the same table of a diverse ethnic mix; there is no one taste for eight people," explained Morimoto. "My concept is to customize the menu for the customer; we say 'omakase.' It depends on how much you want to spend, how much time you have. I want to make it a trend.

"Before, we did the restaurant business from the restaurant side. I want to do it from the customer side: lots of tabletop cooking, making tofu at the table, maybe polishing rice in the restaurant. The main thing is rice: Japan is a rice country; there are no restaurants (in the U.S.) serving good rice."

Morimoto will draw upon the cuisines of Asia – Korea, China, Bali, Singapore, Thailand and Japan, of course – in his "New Asian" cuisine. "I don't want to do the same thing as Nobu. I don't want to be a copy of him," he said.

Hawai'i fans will have a chance to meet Morimoto at the Big Brothers Big Sisters event or perhaps get a glimpse of him on the golf course with Sam Choy.

"His creativity and artistry on the plate sets him apart; he's good," said Choy, who will also be filming an episode of "Sam Choy's Kitchen" with Morimoto in Hawai'i.