One Man's Dream

How many of you remember when the Food Network was in the glory days of television? Many of its shows back then were more dedicated to cooking, food as a living life style, and recognizing food on a global aspect. This was when many of today’s best chefs like Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver, and Martha Stewart risen into power today before Food Network switched to reality game cooking shows. However, although I’m not a huge fan of cooking competitions, there’s one that has always caught my attention since I was a little kid, Iron Chef Japan.

Before I actually travelled to Japan, Iron Chef was the highlighted cooking competition in the world before any other cooking competition show was created. This was the foundation of all competition shows today. As I remember watching this show as a kid, it was more fascinating to see the style of the show. I was more fascinated with the story line, chefs, kitchen stadium, and the food more than watching it as a cooking competition.

A string orchestra would play with a famous quote by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin would be shown on display, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”. I knew that it was time to be glued to the television set with the Iron Chef officially playing. As the introduction played, it begins with a back story of one man’s dream Gourmet Academy chairman Takeshi Kaga, who had a dream of opening up a giant cooking arena for chefs to utilize their creations, skills, and creativity to come up with new exotic culinary dishes. The cooking arena was officially known as “Kitchen Stadium”. Top culinary chefs from around the world are often invited to compete with chairman Kaga’s Gourmet Academy leading chefs in which they were known as “The Iron Chefs”.  There were seven Iron chefs on the show in which they each cooked a specific cuisine. Three Japanese Chefs; Masaharu Morimoto, Koumei Nakamura, and Rokusaburo Michiba. Two French; Yutaka Ishinabe, and Hiroyuki Sakai. One Italian chef named Masahiko Kobe, and Chen Kenichi who was Iron Chef Chinese.  There was a back story between all of them, but there’s also a back story to the challengers before they were introduced in Kitchen Stadium. When both chefs would enter in Kitchen Stadium, we would be introduced to the theme ingredient. Minutes later, “ALLEZ, CUISINE” is shouted by Chairman Kaga, the gong strikes, and the three notes from Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the common man is sounded off. Each chef has absolutely one hour to tackle their dishes.

While Iron Chef Japan focused more so on talent, creativity, and presentation of the chefs and where they came from, I looked way beyond the competition itself. The judges who were also featured in this show were mainly famous guest people and not culinary food critics. When the food was being judge, it focuses less on criticism of the cooking and food, and more so of the taste and what the judges’ opinions were. So where am I going with in this blog? Here’s my dream…. Coming up in Part 2 very soon.