Iron Chef ad-libs on Big Island

Advertiser Staff

Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto gave a cooking demonstration at the Big Island Festival. Gannett News Service

Morimoto appears on the cooking show "Iron Chef."

In the closing event of the first Big Island Festival, Morimoto gave a cooking demonstration made all the more hilarious by the fact that half the ingredients he wanted were nowhere to be found, the other half kept blowing away in a howling wind, and his gas stove wouldn't stay lit.

Afterward, he hosted a cooking competition between members of sponsoring Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs group and Island chefs — with two of the three rounds won by Hawai'i cooks. Morimoto stayed good-natured throughout but quipped, "If I have another life and they ask me to be Iron Chef, I say no!"