Directory:Iron Chef
Iron Chef was one of the greatest cooking shows on television, of all time.
The rules were somewhat simple. Challengers from all over Japan (and in later episodes, challengers from the USA and France), would come to face an Iron Chef, who was a top chef in one of four styles of cooking:
- French Cuisine was originally represented by Yutaka Ishinabe, who left after one year, and was replaced by Hiroyuki Sakai
- Chinese Cuisine was represented by Chen Kenmin
- Italian Cuisine was represented by Masahiko Kobe
- Japanese Cuisine was represented by three chefs. The first Iron Chef Japanese was Rokusaburo Michiba, who retired after several seasons due to health problems. The second Iron Chef Japanese was Komei Nakamura, and the third and final Iron Chef Japanese was Masaharu Morimoto (who has since moved to the American version of the show, Iron Chef America).
The show's focus, Chairman Kaga, a supposed millionaire who had spent his vast fortune to create "Kitchen Stadium", a giant cooking arena, would invite the challenger to pick which Iron Chef he wished to battle. Then, right before the battle, he would unveil the episode's theme ingredient, which the two chefs would have to use in all their dishes.
The challenger and Iron Chef would each have one hour to make as many dishes as they could, using the theme ingredient. They were judged on taste, innovativeness, and presentation.
Usually, the Iron Chef would defeat the challenger (the Iron Chefs had a final record of 221 wins, 68 defeats, and 8 draws), but due to Iron Chef's popularity, a winning challenger would normally see it's clientele greatly expanded. There was great pressure on the Iron Chefs to constantly win. How much pressure? Well, Iron Chef Komei Nakamura complained that his family ostracized him after each defeat (one of the factors that led to him eventually resigning as an Iron Chef).
The combination of campiness (the flamboyantly dressed Chairman Kaga, the exotic theme ingredients, the storylines (one time when his Iron Chefs had lost several battles in a row, Chairman Kaga boycotted his role in disgust, which forced the show's color commentator, Yukio "Doc" Hattori to run the show until one of his Iron Chefs had won), and the competitiveness of the actual battles was a mixture popular in both Japan and America.
I have acquired 157 of these episodes, and will be doing reviews of as many of them as I can.
Episode Guide
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