CHEUNG HAS ENTERED THE KITCHEN STADIUM
Montreal cook says his experience as a judge on the new Canadian version of Iron Chef is ‘like a childhood dream’
In cooking school and as a young cook in Vancouver, Jonathan Cheung used to watch the original Japanese version of Iron Chef on television “religiously.” The show featured guest chefs who challenged resident Iron Chefs in a timed cooking battle, during which they prepared a multi-course meal around a secret ingredient that had to be incorporated into each dish: no notice, no time to plan.
Dubbed or subtitled into English, the show was kind of over-the-top and a bit campy, with cooks battling it out in a huge arena known as the Kitchen Stadium, and a Chairman who favoured costume-y formal wear and dramatic gestures presiding over the proceedings. It had a huge following.
The Japanese version ran from 1993-99 and continued in reruns on American and Canadian food channels. An American version made its debut in 2005, and this week Iron Chef Canada premièred on Food Network Canada.
Cheung, owner of the Appetite for Books cookbook store in Westmount, will appear on three episodes this season, as part of the rotating panel of three judges. His first appearance will be on the Oct. 24 episode.
For young cooks, Iron Chef “was kind of our pop culture,” recalled Cheung, now 40.
“They have some of the best chefs in the world and you were able to watch them cook and observe their process — how they were thinking through the dish and the final product. Every cook can relate to it — and to how difficult it is in that short amount of time, in a kitchen you never cooked in, as a competitor, going up against this really amazing Iron Chef, one of the best in the world.
“I was lucky to be able to see it from on the sidelines, and watch and meet the chefs. And unlike a lot of people, I got to taste 10 courses of the best food in Canada right at that moment.”
“It’s kind of like a childhood dream,” he said of his experience at the show’s taping in August in Toronto. “I remember watching Iron Chef Japan when I was in cooking school — and here I am, sitting in Kitchen Stadium . ... The excitement when you walk through the curtains and you see the cooking stations and the chefs and the Chairman standing in front of the stage: I thought, ‘I can’t believe I am here right now.’ ”
Cheung began his cooking training
in Vancouver, where he grew up, then spent two years in Hong Kong working at his family ’s restaurants. He moved to Montreal and worked briefly in an Old Montreal restaurant before opening Appetite for Books nearly 13 years ago. The bookstore also hosts enormously popular cooking classes, which he often teaches and are almost always booked solid.
He brings knowledge and affability to his work, which served him well when he interviewed celebrity chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain in a one-on-one event in 2007 that drew a full house at the Corona Theatre in Little Burgundy. An episode of Bourdain’s show The Layover in 2011 featured Cheung, “and to this day I get people in the store because they saw us on one of his shows.”
Cheung was devastated by Bourdain’s suicide in June.
“I’m still in mourning, as a lot of people that I know are,” he said.
“The influence he had on me, and chefs of my generation, is indescribable,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “He made careers, he made restaurants, and he made people excited to try different things.”
Iron Chef Canada is hosted by food writer Gail Simmons. Food critic and writer Chris NuttallSmith provides play-by-play commentary as a kind of roving floor reporter, while Vancouver-born actor Jai West is the Chairman.
Challengers will face one of Iron Chefs Hugh Acheson, Amanda Cohen, Lynn Crawford, Rob Feenie and Susur Lee.
Cheung didn’t know who the Iron Chef would be in the episodes in which he appeared, or the secret ingredient, until 10 minutes before taping started.
“I feel like the judges need to experience it the same way the competitors do,” he said. “If I knew who the Iron Chef was, I would have preconceived notions.”
And he learned who his fellow judges would be only right before the show. On the Oct. 24 episode, they are food writer and cookbook author Tara O’Brady and Globe and Mail restaurant critic Alexandra Gill.
Being a professionally trained cook helped him as a judge, Cheung said.
“A lot of the other judges are food writers and bloggers, and in the food industry in one way or another. I like to think that, when I’m tasting, I don’t look for the fancy adjective. I look at it in more of a technical way — if it’s seared the right way, if all the ingredients that have to be there are there, if the sauce works.”
The competitors really have no time at all to think.
“The Chairman announces the secret ingredient and they literally take two minutes to decide what to do,” Cheung said.
Each chef has two sous-chefs and 60 minutes to prepare five dishes, “and there’s just so much action: six people cooking at one time, pots and pans clattering everywhere.
“We have some amazing chefs in Canada. Many are known in their respective city, but not known outside, so to compete against an Iron Chef is a great opportunity.”
The challenger on Oct. 24 is Vancouver-based Ocean Wise executive chef Ned Bell; the Iron Chef is Feenie, also a Vancouverite.
“When I was a young cook growing up in Vancouver, he was a god,” Cheung said.
Feenie was the first Canadian to win on Iron Chef America: he defeated Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, who had appeared on the original show.
“They say you never want to meet the people you idolize, because they will let you down,” Cheung said. “But he’s the nicest guy ever — very humble and gracious and gentle. He understood any form of criticism and took it well, as something constructive. A lot of cooks or chefs can’t do that.”
Cheung will also appear in episodes airing Nov. 21 and Dec. 19. La Presse restaurant critic MarieClaude Lortie, a judge in the first episode, will also be on the Nov. 14 and 21 judges’ panels. Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman will be a judge on the Dec. 12 episode.