料理の鉄人

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Holy Christwagons! I haven’t thought about that show in years!

It’d play on one of the local independent stations here (KTSF 26). My girlfriend at the time and I never missed an episode.

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I flipping loved that show! I even wrote a retro computer game based on it for the TI/99-4A.

IRONCHEF

You had to collect the ingredients that Chairman Kaga threw at you, including of course a pepper with a bite taken out of it. Each “life” was a different one of the Iron Chefs.

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@SandyFrank That’s amazing!

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Noticed this article today

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God, it’s been forever. I love and miss the original Iron Chef series.

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Sakai was the man.

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And HOW exactly are you alive to tell the tale?

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Everyone would be too drunk and high to notice if I cheated.

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I loved Iron Chef. I’m wanting to introduce my daughter to it but I don’t know if it’s available streaming anywhere. I know she’d love it if she got a chance to see it.

I always wondered why Chairman Kaga was subtitled and everyone else was dubbed.

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This show was amazing. Americans ruin pretty much everything.

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Because it’s funnier that way.

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If I recall it’s because the actor who portrays him requested he not be overdubbed. Also, he’s the only actor on a show where otherwise everyone is themself, so that may have played into the decision as well.

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I had a few drinks and wrote an Iron Chef episode the other night. Enjoy! Or not.

Black screen with Brillat-Savarin quote “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are, Fatso.”

Kenji Fukui: “Five years ago, a man’s fantasy became a reality in a form never seen before; Kitchen Stadium, a giant cooking arena. To realise his dream, he secretly started choosing the top chefs of various styles of cooking, and he named his men the Iron Chefs; the invincible men of culinary skills. Basically, it’s pro wrestling with added lobster.”

Chairman Kaga’s voice-over: “If my memory serves me correctly, our latest contender yada yada yada…”

B&W footage of a very intense man slicing something in a very intense manner.

Picture of gigantic mega-hotel that looks exactly like the one in the previous episode, and the one before that.

The Chairman’s voice-over intensifies.

Photo-montage of very intense man, each time looking older, balder and more stressed.

Opening sequence, ending with Chairman Kaga taking a big bite of a yellow pepper and trying not to retch too obviously. He fails.

Logo WHOosh…

…Logo whoOSH

Interchangeable female guest judge is introduced. She titters, flicks her hair and giggles, while everyone wishes they’d booked Keiko Saito instead.

Mmm… Keiko Saito…

Interchangeable male guest judge is introduced. He’s a baseball player. He’s also quite boring, but forces a smile at Fukui’s laboured quips.

Yukio Hattori and his giant throbbing brain is introduced, “always a pleasure”.

Applause smatters.

Introducing Chairman Kaga, dressed in an understated outfit of purple lamé catsuit, dodo-feather boa, gloves that shoot laser beams, patent-leather shoes with goldfish in the heels and a cravat made from the finest Iberico ham.

Introducing the challenger. He is either the head chef of some shiny Tokyo humungo-hotel, or he used to be, or he will be soon.

Everybody’s favourite heel, Toshiro Kandagawa, kicks down the studio door, moons the assembled audience and does the rabbit ears behind Chairman Kaga’s head.

Kandagawa: “This boy’s the real deal! He’s gonna kick some sorry Iron Chef ass for the noble cause of real Japanese cooking!”

The challenger looks a little embarrassed by this outburst and mumbles “I’ll win for sure… yes.”

Introducing the Iron Chefs – the thinking woman’s crumpet Hiroyuki Sakai, Masaharu Morimoto (loud verbal abuse from the Ota Faction), Chen Kenichi and his Big Scary Knife… oh, and Masahiko Kobe. Because nobody ever chooses Kobe, his platform immediately begins to descend again, before the challenger actually makes his choice. He sulks, while the other Iron Chefs try not to smirk at Morimoto’s ludicrously short and practical hat.

The challenger is asked to choose an Iron Chef. It is Sakai! ‘Mr Boombastic’ by Shaggy plays as the Delacroix of French cuisine descends to the floor of Kitchen Stadium. Many items of lingerie are flung.

The Chairman appears to be having a seizure. Oh hang on, he’s just revealing the ingredient. Yes, it’s velociraptor!

The Chairman’s voice-over: “Ah, velociraptor. If my memory serves me correctly, it is said that the very finest meat comes from the perineum of this much-prized berserk killing machine. Those with taste and distinction recognise that other highly-valued parts of this ruinously expensive bipedal Cuisinart are the sweat glands. Now, let me repeat that again… always serve the grundle and the pits.”

The cameraman tries to position the winged green “Kaga” logo on the challenger’s chin, like a silly beard, but the challenger has seen the show before and weaves from side to side like a boxer. The spoilsport.

“ALLEZ CUISINE!” suffers another fatal mangling.

The Iron Chef and the challenger try to subdue four enraged but delicious velociraptors. Many assistants are killed, and some are partially eaten. No matter; Gourmet Academy can always train more.

Fukui: “Bang a gong, we are on! So, the ingredient is velociraptor. Hattori-san, what can you tell me about this little-known white meat?”

Hattori: “Don’t make it angry. You wouldn’t like it if it was angry. Also, it goes well with cabbage and bacon.”

Logo WHOosh…

…Logo whoOSH

A discussion begins among the judges and, as always, is disrupted by a breathless “Fukui-san?”

Ohta swigs another gallon of Red Bull and reels off a list of ingredients in five seconds flat “garlic-ginger-celery-ketchup-soy sauce-armadillo bladder-winter melon-champagne-tennis balls-parsley-cilantro-weltschmerz-lotus root-umeboshi-galoshes-veal stock-salt-and-tilefish, pant pant pant…”

Interchangeable female guest judge: “I like food, tee hee hee.” She simpers and flicks her hair again.

Interchangeable male guest judge (surreptitiously peeking at the notes he made on his shirt cuff): “could he be making a chawanmushi?” Someone makes a chawanmushi most weeks, so he’s playing safe here.

Fukui: “Fire in the hole!” No, not a dish being flambéed, but Kandagawa has mischievously lit one of his farts and ignited Sakai’s gloriously camp toque.

Ohta: “FUKUI-SAN!”

Fukui: “Hell’s bells, that was loud – what do you have for us?”

Ohta: “The challenger says he’s aiming to present five dishes, while Sakai told me to shove off.”

Fukui: “Five dishes, eh?”

Hattori: “Shove off, eh? Heh, heh, heh.”

Both chefs switch on their rice cookers, which excites the commentators far more than a white plastic box with an LED on the front really should.

Iron Chef Sakai twinkles at the laydeez. Millions of Japanese women of a certain age swoon in front of their TV sets.

Interchangeable female guest judge: “Ooh, look at the challenger! He’s just beheaded an underling for slicing a mushroom one angstrom too thick.”

A voice from backstage yells “use some XO Sauce”. Sakai ripostes “have you got shares in that damn stuff, Chen?”

The ice cream maker is started up. Yep, one of ‘em is making dinosaur ice cream, not because he should, but because he can.

Interchangeable female guest judge ”Ewww, tee hee hee.”

Interchangeable male guest judge: “What the fu… I mean, how intriguing.”

Sakai adds foie gras and caviar to all the dishes. Even the dessert. He winks at the camera, the scamp.

Something is sliced very fine, then something else is too, then both are wrapped in something else.

Hattori: “Oh, I get it; he must be planning to steam this. No, I think he’s going to grill it. No… steam it.” The challenger fries it instead and all ambient sound in the studio is temporarily drowned out by the sound of furiously grinding teeth.

The hour is up, and Ohta is in like Flynn with the colour-coded microphone.

Challenger: “That was an hour? You’re kidding! Uh, I think I did okay.”

Sakai: “Wow, that was tough. Especially before we killed the damn things.”

Logo WHOosh…

…Logo whoOSH

At least one of the dishes is always grey, jellied and looks like Cthulhu’s snot. There’s something else in an earthenware pot that could be primordial soup. One of Sakai’s dishes is physically impossible to convey to the table without it collapsing under the weight of its own chichi-ness.

Weedy novelist Tamio Kageyama is a guest judge this episode and, as always, gets a Woody Allen voice in the English dub. A grinning Kandagawa sneaks up behind and gives him a wedgie.

Another guest judge is Shinichiro Kurimoto, a man who magically appears whenever a free lunch is being served. You’d never guess he was a politician, would you?

Interchangeable female guest judge: “This is… good! Tee hee hee.”

The guest judges tuck in and talk at length about balance, profundity and beautifully subtle flavour combinations, while actually thinking “free food, hell yeah!” Meanwhile, Kishi glowers at her plate and ingests a molecule’s worth of the dish before saying something that contradicts everyone else’s opinion.

A guest judge congratulates the challenger for removing all traces of odour from his dishes, then panics because he thinks he’s got COVID-19. Kaga allays his fears by reminding him that this is 1996.

Logo WHOosh…

…Logo whoOSH

We have a quick recap of the show.

Fukui: “Who takes it? Whose cuisine reigns supreme?

Chairman Kaga announces that the winner is… the Iron Chef! Much mutual bowing and handshaking.

It is revealed that Gauleiter von Kishi has marked it 19/17 for the Iron Chef. Basically, she thought Dreamboat Morimoto was going to get picked in this episode and she’s damned if she’s going to bother changing the score she wrote down on the train to the studio.

Roll credits.

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I think there’s a twitch channel that streams it all day long. I think it’s also may be in secret ingredient alphabetical order, if memory serves.

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Bang a gong, we are ON!image

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image

Iron Chef America tangent: As I was watching RiffTrax do Double Dragon I kept thinking “where do I know that guy from?” It took me a while.

iron_chef_america

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