My Dinner with Matsuo-san

Since it debuted on Japanese television in 1993, Iron Chef has become part of the world's cultural lexicon. Few, however, know the man behind the curtain. My wife and I are among the fortunate.

He's crazy about Ben-Hur. He loves Columbo. He looks exactly like Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. He's Toshihiko Matsuo, the creative genius behind the jaw-dropping Japanese television cooking spectacle known as Ryori no Tetsujin or Iron Chef.

For many dedicated viewers, Iron Chef is simply the most entertaining program ever televised. But in the mind of producer Matsuo, it's a virtual reality fight to the death in which two dueling chefs have just 60 minutes to complete an elaborate, gourmet dinner for a panel of four judges. As if the time pressure weren't enough, each of the chefs' five courses must showcase a surprise theme ingredient - such as foie gras, giant sea bass, cod roe, or Guinea fowl - that is revealed only at the beginning of the program. In the history of television cooking there simply has never been anything to rival Iron Chef.

"It's the Peckinpah of the culinary world" is how TV cooking celebrity Graham Kerr described the show referring to the auteur of such classic blood fests as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs. Jacques, Julia, Burt, Martin, Emeril, (and you two fat ladies from England) move aside. This is must see TV.

Broadcast in just a few U.S. markets, Iron Chef has been seen by a small but rapidly growing set of rabid fans. Only three American chefs have been called to Japan to do battle. Fewer Americans have been invited to witness a taping of the show at Fuji-TV's ultra-futuristic studios on Tokyo Bay. When my wife and I had the chance, we were on the next plane.

With our 15 month old daughter along and my mother-in-law in tow as baby-sitter, the ten hour flight to Tokyo all but wiped us out. When Matsuo invited us out that evening, we didn't think we could stand let alone conduct a coherent interview. The translator said it would only take an hour or so.

"I can't do it," my wife Nina said pulling the covers up over her eyes. "You go."

"Come on," I told her. "Get up. It'll be an adventure. We'll be back in 90 minutes."

Little did we know.

Getting to our rendez-vous with Matsuo resembled a mission worthy of a secret agent. We were given instructions to be in front of an ice cream parlor in the Nishi-Azabu No Cosaten neighborhood of Tokyo at 7 p.m. Our cab zipped through a series of tiny back streets. After crossing and recrossing our path several times, we arrived at the designated meeting spot.

A fortyish man with a modified early Beatles haircut, stood on the corner. He wore a collarless, retro linen jacket with a gray and charcoal button down shirt. With Matsuo was a wildly slinky thing in a leopard skin leotard who could have been a Tilly sister or the Catwoman. She was Hanako Aso, one of the show's assistant producers. The translator I had engaged over the Internet was nowhere in sight. I had been warned that Mr. Matsuo spoke no English. After exchanging business cards and several minutes of a mostly silent pantomime Matsuo led us to Cricket Cha-Cha, an improbably named bistro a few steps away.

Takeshi Kaga, a well-known Japanese actor, plays the host of Iron Chef, an eccentric with no name who lives in a medieval castle. In his employ are four Iron Chefs, each a respective master of French, Italian, Chinese, or Japanese cuisine. At the beginning of each episode he struggles to identify a challenger worthy of his chefs' talents and his own jaded palate. This he often does while contemplating a cream puff in the sallow light of an oil lamp.

At last pleased with his decision, he devours the pastry in a single, ravenous bite. It's Dark Shadows meets World Wrestling. (In fact the show's play-by-play commentary is handled by Japan's best known baseball announcer and the color commentary comes courtesy of a super fast talking ringside reporter who indeed used to cover professional wrestling.) While watching Iron Chef one can't help but wonder "Who on earth thought of this?" I was about to find out. I took out my list of 35 critical questions any self-respecting Iron Chef viewer would want to ask Matsuo.

Fortunately, Hiroko, the translator, had arrived. So, too, had Masaharu Morimoto, the executive chef at Nobu in New York who had been recently anointed as the third Iron Chef of Japanese cuisine. Mr. Kaga's manager joined us. Soon we were nine.

I thought we were going out for drinks but when the first course arrived, a small plate with two elegantly placed, sardines marinated in vinaigrette, I realized we were in for dinner. Champagne was poured. Matsuo-san lit a Mild Seven after asking us several times if we minded smoke. For the rest of the evening, his fingers were never without a cigarette. What I thought was going to be a quick interview over drinks was about to become an evening spent lingering over a dinner worthy of Iron Chef.

The sardines were fabulous. Four perfect, slightly tart bites. The table was cleared and the second course served; a small swirl of angel hair misted with just a hint of a tomato sauce and topped with a small piece of roasted crab served with a dry white wine. Again, it was just four bites. Four perfect bites.

Even to the long time viewer of Iron Chef, the mysteries of the show are many. I wanted to know more about the mysterious gourmand played by actor Kaga. Matsuo explained that he is fabulously wealthy and a bit "mad" like Ludwig II of Bavaria, also famed for his castle. Like Pushkin's Eugene Onegin he has done everything there is to do. To relieve his ennui he decided to host a cooking competition as suggested to him by his faithful culinary advisor (played on the show by Yukio Hattori, head of a well known cooking school in Japan). "He's a bit on the crazy side. A bit eccentric," Matsuo said of Kaga's character. But what about the ruffled shirts, the sequined bolero jackets, and the thick black leather gauntlets he wears each week. Those are "important factors" Matsuo said, shedding no more light on one of the most unlikely uniforms ever seen on television.

Two biscotti shaped slices of beef tenderloin served with a merlot were our third course. "This is the best meat I've ever tasted," my wife whispered in my ear. It was tremendously tender, nearly cleaving itself as the knife descended. Four more bites and it, too, was gone.

"What about the pepper?" I asked Matsuo. Each episode of Iron Chef begins with Kaga's character stepping onto the set and taking in the view of the two fabulously stocked, semi-circular, mirror image kitchens that comprise the "kitchen stadium." Satisfied with what he sees, he reaches into a basket of vegetables, clutches an orange bell pepper, and takes a mischievous, gleeful bite.

"Very important," Matsuo answered before going on to explain that this is the host's way of showing the extremes to which he must go to demonstrate his passion for food after savoring so many countless gourmet meals.

I mentioned that the kitchen stadium reminded me of The Coliseum in Rome. "Exactly!" Matsuo said, snatching the English word from the air just inches in front of my face. The set was designed to reflect the charged atmosphere of the chariot race in Ben-Hur, a place where two culinary gladiators would fight to the finish. Although challengers do occasionally triumph, the incredible time pressure combined with their lack of familiarity with the set gives the resident Iron Chefs a huge home court advantage.

The third and most recent American to pick up Matsuo's gauntlet is Ron Siegel of San Francisco. Siegel, then cooking at Charles Nob Hill, had never heard of the show when Matsuo selected him to appear on Iron Chef. Forewarned that the surprise theme ingredient would be chestnuts, salmon, acorn squash or lobster he developed a menu that could work with any of them.

"I was going to do a soup, salad, pasta, an entrée no matter what and a custard if it was lobster," Siegel said. After two days of practice with two non-English speaking sous chefs, Siegel thought he was ready. But when he arrived at the studio for the taping, the Iron Chef staff allowed him to bring in only the two stocks he had prepared. Everything else he planned to use was confiscated, according to the rules of the show. The Iron Chef larder rivals the finest markets in the world, but still it was unsettling for Siegel, then a youthful veteran of Restaurant Daniel in New York and Aqua in San Francisco.

"This is ridiculous," Siegel says he thought at the time. "I can't speak Japanese. They wouldn't let me bring in my stuff. But I thought I'm still going to do it."

Matsuo and the staff at Iron Chef weren't so sure. A third of the way into the battle, the American challenger hadn't finished a single dish. Matsuo thought disaster was imminent.

"The time goes very fast," Siegel said. "I thought I was doomed. After twenty minutes they were all in the studio control room thinking I was never going to finish. They told me if I failed they would have canceled the show and lost a million bucks!"

One of the challenges of Iron Chef is cooking with one, two, and three cameras sometimes only inches from one's face. "There was a point when I started swearing and the cameraman just wouldn't back off," Siegel recalls. "The cable would get caught around my leg and I had to push him away." Do-koo! Move! is the only word of Japanese Siegel picked up on the set.

For Siegel, the show began inauspiciously. A huge tank of live lobsters rose out of the floor presenting Siegel and Hiroyuki Sakai, the Iron Chef of French cuisine, with their theme ingredient. Once host Kaga gave the command "Start cooking gentlemen!" they literally ran across the set to select the lobsters.

Racing back with a tray of live lobsters, Siegel's leg became ensnared in a television cable that stripped off his shoe. Like awaiting a crash at an auto race, anticipating potential mishaps provides part of the thrill of watching Iron Chef. Rice cookers break, food processors fly out of control, sorbets have frozen stiff inside ice cream machines, difficult to open cans are occasionally attacked with a hammer and screwdriver, and many a chef has severely lacerated a finger while working in haste. In Siegel's case he quickly recovered his shoe, turned out a sumptuous five-course lobster dinner that the judges unanimously preferred over the fare prepared by Iron Chef Sakai. San Francisco's Charles Nob Hill can expect to be inundated by Japanese tourists anxious to sample the cuisine of the first American ever to emerge victorious on Iron Chef.

Listening to the Japanese dialog on Iron Chef is not unlike eavesdropping on a phone sex call. Invariably one of the judges is a willowy, young Japanese actress given to cooing pornographically over whatever the battling chefs are concocting. Occasionally all the judges look like they are about to have an orgasm while sampling the food. "Eating food is like having sex," Matsuo confirmed. With my wife next to me I didn't pursue the topic area further but I sensed that Mr. Matsuo probably knew a lot about both topics.

Two inch square chunks of stew meat bathed in a raspberry sauce were our fourth course accompanied by a weighty cabernet. "Beef cheeks," Matsuo said. Just weeks earlier we had watched "Battle Beef Cheek" on Iron Chef and were slack jawed when the challenger produced a beef cheek mille feuille.

My wife took a bite. "No, I take it back," she said. "This is the best meat I've ever eaten." Once again, the serving offered just four bites. After four courses we had put the fork to our mouths just sixteen times. But the food was perfectly prepared and perfectly proportioned. Another bite and the senses would have started to dull.

Frequently throughout the evening, the entire table would break up at one of Matsuo's comments. I sensed we weren't getting everything in Hiroko's curt translations. Later on I found out that she last brushed up on English while an exchange student in the U.S. An elementary school exchange student. So much for procuring a translator through the Internet. After the fourth course, however, things got suddenly serious.

The table was a-buzz with nodding heads. "What are they talking about?" I asked Hiroko. She leaned into the table as though that would help her pick up the drift of the conversation. "They are talking about an American woman," she said. "Someone named Martha Stewart. Do you know her?"

With the Japanese economy in a prolonged slump, even successful shows such as Iron Chef, which has been nominated twice for an Emmy, have found themselves struggling. Matsuo somehow concluded that the show could ride out the Japanese recession but only with the help of the American market and Martha Stewart in particular.

"Why not ask her to be a judge?" I suggested. Hiroko translated. Matsuo snapped his fingers toward assistant producer Aso. "Okay cut!" he said which I interpreted his way of saying "Let's do it!"

It was getting late and I still had a long list of questions. "Please ask Mr. Matsuo what the "K" means?" I asked the translator. The Iron Chef set and the Iron Chefs' uniforms are all emblazoned with "Gourmet Academy" and a winged crest surrounding the letter "K." At first I thought the "K" perhaps stood for host Takeshi Kaga's surname, but Kaga's persona is nameless. Perhaps the fictitious castle started with a "K." Watching the show there was no way to know. A small platter of dried red raisins slid onto the table. Matsuo placed one in his mouth. He looked at me for a moment. "K stand for kitchen," he said. So much for the mysteries of the East.

During its five year run in Japan the program has had seven different Iron Chefs, three of whom are now retired. I wanted to know how Matsuo selected Morimoto as the most recent Iron Chef. He explained that he wanted an English speaking Japanese chef who was on the cutting edge, who could challenge the conventions of traditional Japanese cooking. "It was destiny," he said of his decision to reach all the way to New York to find Morimoto at Nobu Matsuhisa's eponymous New York venue. "It was God's will." (Morimoto may need divine intervention, however, to handle the demands of commuting monthly from New York to Tokyo where he tapes two shows back to back.)

Our fifth course was a cheese and fruit plate that was quickly followed by a delicious light tea cake with crème frâiche and strawberries. I looked at my watch. It was quarter to midnight. I couldn't believe it. As fast as an hour goes by on Iron Chef, five hours had flown by during my dinner with Matsuo. I had a jet-lagged baby and a weary baby-sitting mother-in-law to worry about. It was time to go.

I asked Matsuo what he would like to see come of the article I planned to write. "If I can feel your heart in it, that will be great," he said. "Remember, the future of Iron Chef depends on the American market and Martha Stewart."

A version of this story originally appeared in the October 14, 1998 edition of the Los Angeles Times and, together with the following story, helped start the Iron Chef phenomenon in the United States.

Allez Cuisiner!

Long before there was Iron Chef USA, Iron Chef America or The Next Iron Chef there was… Iron Chef. In 1998, my wife and I were among the first Americans to see the show in person.

Flickering torches illuminated the medieval hall. Beneath the glare of pinpoint spotlights, two men, still glistening with sweat from their hour-long battle, took deep, quiet breaths awaiting the verdict that would determine their fate. On the other side of the vast room, four judges solemnly followed a man dressed in a black, sequined toreador jacket down a curving stairway. The man in black was not Johnny Cash. The two men silently waiting were not gladiators. They were chefs. This was not the denouement of a science fiction fight-to-the-death movie but the finale of the jaw-dropping Japanese television spectacle known as Ryori No Tetsujin or Iron Chef.

A staple of late night television in Japan since October 1993, Iron Chef has been credited with introducing balsamic vinegar to Japan and turning that nation into the number one foie gras eating country on earth. More amazingly, over the same period, "professional chef" has risen from #17 in a poll of Japanese elementary school boys as a career choice to the #3 spot, just behind baseball player and soccer player. The men anointed as Iron Chefs have risen from the obscurity of the culinary world to celebrities known throughout Japan. Iron Chef threatens to have as much impact on Japan's culinary habits as Commodore Perry's incursion into Tokyo Bay had on the country's modern history.

Since first seeing Iron Chef on San Francisco's KTSF I have been hooked. In the history of television, there has never been anything like Iron Chef.

Filmed on a huge stage at Tokyo's ultra-modern Fuji-TV studios, Iron Chef is an eye-popping whirlwind of cooking dexterity that somehow manages to combine the melodrama of a 1950s horror picture with the flair of a Las Vegas stage show and the hype of the World Wrestling Federation.

The show follows a mesmerizing format. Actor Takeshi Kaga, well-known for his portrayals of Jean Valjean, Jesus, and Tony in the Japanese stage versions of Les Mis, Jesus Christ Superstar and West Side Story, plays the mysterious, fabulously wealthy man in black. Like Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, his character has grown bored with a life of privilege.

Desperate for something to engage his weary fantasy, he built an immense kitchen stadium within the walls of his castle. Each week he invites a renown chef to do battle against one of his French, Japanese, Chinese, or Italian Iron Chefs. Forewarned that the battle will center on one of four possible theme ingredients, the chefs have just 60 minutes to prep, cook, and plate a five-course meal which will be judged by Kaga's guests, a foursome that consists of a revolving set of actors, sportscasters, journalists, astrologers, politicians, a well-known food critic, and an ingénue who generally pants her comments in a breathless awe that often borders on the pornographic.

One of the first episodes I saw on San Francisco's KTSF was "Battle Anago Eel." The English subtitles described foods I had never heard of. Presented with a tank swarming with hundreds of live eels, Chinese Iron Chef Kenichi Chin turned out a four-course meal that included "crunchy anago eel salad." I watched slack-jawed as the challenger completed his "stacked anago with foie gras, eggplant, sun-dried tomatoes and balsamic dressing." Despite years of watching Jacques, Julia, Burt, Martin, and other TV chefs, I had never ever seen anything like this. To catch up on episodes that aired before I had heard of Iron Chef I surfed the unofficial web sites maintained by fanatical viewers. I never missed a new show. I was hooked.

With the ingredient revealed, the chefs have a split second to finalize their mental menus before Kaga commands, "Allez cuisiner!" The race is on and it's no less thrilling than had he said, "Start your engines!"

"I could not turn it off," says TV chef Graham Kerr who caught the show by accident while in San Francisco. "I was slacked jawed as I watched. It's the Peckinpah of the culinary world," he said referring to the director of The Wild Bunch.

Wayne Nish, executive chef at New York's March restaurant, was the first American to have battled on Iron Chef.

"They told me it would either be turkey, celery, turnips or apples. The day before the show I considered how I could plan a menu that would work with any of the main ingredients. I was able to do that with three: apple, turnip and celery. But I didn't know what to do with turkey? How do you do a dessert with turkey?"

One of the most astounding aspects of the show is the chefs' ability to create dishes out of thin air and inspiration. In "Battle Beef Tongue," Japanese Iron Chef Komei Nakamura conjured up "ice cream with wine simmered beef tongue and beef tongue wafers" on the way to winning a 4-0 knockout over challenger Miyashiro Kiyoshi of Tokyo's highly regarded Ebisu Kaem restaurant.

Against French Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai, Wayne Nish suffered a similarly unanimous defeat. Using a translator to communicate with two Japanese sous chefs, Nish, whom Iron Chef called Nishi to emphasize his Japanese heritage, found himself on the wrong end of home court advantage. "My communication with the other chefs was so bad I could not enlist their help to plate the dishes so I literally had to plate all 24 within the allotted time." Typical of the Iron Chef sense of humor and drama, New Yorker Nish's theme ingredient couldn't have been anything other than (Big) apples.

Japanese audiences were as astounded by Nish's 6'4" height as by his use of huge pieces of extremely expensive toro - fatty tuna - and melons which can run over $100 a piece in Japan. The budget for theme ingredients alone such as foie gras, matsutake mushrooms, caviar, and sharks fin often approaches $25,000. The Iron Chef larder overflows with hundreds of bottles of wine, dozens of different types of fresh meat and seafood, and fresh fruits and vegetables flown in from around the world. Everything from white truffles to sea urchin ovaries is stocked and ready should a chef require it for a dish.

The newest addition to the Iron Chef bullpen is Masaharu Morimoto, the Executive Chef at Nobu in Manhattan. Morimoto flies to Tokyo as often as twice a month to battle as the third in a line of Japanese Iron Chefs. Having to fight two challengers in one day means that Morimoto must arrive at the kitchen stadium with up to 50 different dishes in his mind.

I arrived at Fuji-TV's studio four at ten in the morning. Preparations for the show had been going on for hours. Taped on Sundays, the first people to arrive are the plumbers, electricians, and carpenters who must put in the gas, water, and sewer lines. Six hours later, the five-tiered set is ready with no less than four ovens, 14 burners, six sinks, and various appliances laid out in two mirror image, semi-circular kitchens. The crew of nearly 100 raced to get everything and everyone into place. Cases of wine, canned goods and products ranging from Jiffy peanut butter to sea cucumbers ovaries filled the space surrounding the set. Clearly anything a chef might ever want was just within reach.

Hattori Yukio, an originator of the show and owner of a well-known cooking school, tells me it will be an excellent battle. The challenger is Riyou Ju Kyo, the Chinese chef from the Hotel Nikko Tokyo. His brother is Riyou Ju No, the "Grand Chef" of the Chinese kitchen at Tokyo's Hotel Okura, widely considered the best in Japan. Riyou has already decided to challenge Chinese Iron Chef Kenichi Chin, the most popular of the Iron Chefs and the only one of the original three still on the show.

As the chefs waited at the center of the Coliseum-like circular kitchen stadium, Kaga fiendishly rubbed his black-gloved hands in anticipation. With matador like grace, he swept away a red cape as the episode's ingredient rose into view out of a dry-ice cloud. On rare occasions, this opening drama occurs away from center stage, such as during "Battle Lamb" when five fully dressed double sides of lamb were lowered from the ceiling. Or "Battle Milk" when two engorged dairy cows were led into the kitchen stadium by their handlers who immediately began a-milking. As producer Toshihiko Matsuo told me, Iron Chef is as much about entertainment as it is about food. It's designed to dazzle and it rarely disappoints.

The chefs' eyes widened as they took in the theme ingredient; five huge, thickly marbled slabs of boneless pork spare ribs. Instantly the kitchen stadium erupted into activity for "Battle Butabara."

Riyou and Chin began prepping feverishly, oblivious to the portable television cameras that are often six inches from their faces. Overhead, a crane mounted camera swept in for flying aerial shots. Sous chefs raced off-stage for special ingredients. Although I had seen nearly 50 televised Iron Chef episodes, like at any major sporting event, it was much harder to follow the action live and in person than in front of a television screen at home.

Four young women frantically took notes on everything the chefs were doing before running to file their reports with Mr. Ota, the super-fast talking "reporter" who breathlessly informed the home audience that the Iron Chef "has started his rice cooker," which was instantly followed by a close up of the rice cooker which was, indeed, steaming!!

Japan's best known baseball announcer, Kenji Fukui, is the play-by-play man on Iron Chef. He and Mr. Hattori kept a running commentary going while soliciting comments from two of the four guest judges, actor Yoshizumi Ishihara and actress Keiko Saitoh. It didn't take a translator to understand their continuous oohing and aahing over the wonderful smells that were filling the studio.

With just 60 minutes there is no time for measuring or recipes and the chefs often utilize shortcuts better not tried at home. Challenger Riyou began carving a large green melon with the top of a can. Working quickly, his hand slipped and the jagged lid sliced through his index finger. Crew members raced to the scene of the accident but no yellow flag came out. The clock kept ticking and three or four minutes were lost as bandages were applied. Like a spectacular accident at any sporting event, Riyou's bleeding finger will certainly be shown again and again in instant replays. Moments later, catastrophe strikes again when Riyou's food processor breaks.

With just a few minutes left, Riyou's brother came down from the visitors box to advise his younger sibling. Off-screen, a haunting voice counted down the final seconds. Heat waves and steam billowed up from the set. Amidst the frenzy someone spilled cooking oil and, for a few seconds, it's "cooking on ice" as six chefs try to plate and dress 48 dishes before someone thinks to throw salt down on the extremely slippery floor. With the camera inches from his face, the play-by-play man announced that Iron Chef Chin "is sweating profusely." The clock runs out. The studio erupts in applause. An hour has flown by.

"Interesting?" Hattori whispered conspiratorially in my ear. Despite the arch melodrama of the show, the dishes are invariably superb and the styling as delicate and sophisticated as any Asian art form.

For the next two hours the judges sampled and commented on the ten dishes. Although not afraid to criticize, their comments were limited to "This is fabulous" and "This is delicious." Iron Chef Chin nibbled at the extra meal his challenger prepared for the camera as he sipped a Sprite. He deemed the dish "not bad." I ask him a question. "Taste," he tells me as his answer as he puts a piece of pork from a stunning sweet-sour dish in my mouth. It's an inch thick chunk of pure marinated pork fat and absolutely delicious.

At 2:30 I have just minutes to leave the studio if I am to catch my flight home and make my Monday morning appointments in San Francisco but the judges' verdict has not yet been announced. Hattori came over knowing that I must leave. "Secret," he whispered to me. "What?" I asked with one eye on my watch. "Tie," he tells me. "Only four time in five years." The judges had dead locked two to two. Chin, who must fight another full battle that afternoon, will first have to fight a 30-minute tie-breaker with Riyou.

I had seen 28-year old Italian Iron Chef Katsuhiko Kobe fight and lose the third ever Iron Chef tie-breaker. Despite never having cooked with theme ingredient shirako cod roe he still managed to tie his Japanese challenger before losing on points in the overtime botan or "Battle Peony Shrimp."

Hattori tells me that after a brief rest Chin and Riyou will duke it out over konnyaku, a firm, jelly-like substance made from a starchy root vegetable. It's only a 30-minute battle but I have a plane to catch. I can't stay but how can I leave? It's a historic moment. Only the fourth tie in the five years of Iron Chef. Would I have run out on the "Rumble in the Jungle" or the "Thriller in Manila" to make a business meeting? What do I do?

The next day I called Tokyo to learn who had won the tie-breaker. It was an incredibly hard fought battle I was told and in the end victory was snatched by.... Oh, I can't tell you that. But if you must know, then call your cable operator and demand that they program Iron Chef. Cause if you haven't seen Iron Chef, then you really haven't seen "must see TV."

A version of this story originally appeared in 1998 in Saveur (Issue #29).