A knight in whites: Local culinary star Posteraro takes on Iron Chef
Giuseppe (Pino) Posteraro is not a seeker of fame by nature, but he could not turn down the chance to compete on television against one of his oldest friends.
When Iron Chef Canada airs today, the owner and chef of Cioppino’s Mediterranean Grill in Yaletown will face off against Toronto’s Susur Lee in Battle Crab.
“The Iron Chef is a dear friend of mine since 1984, when I first moved to Ontario,” said Posteraro. “I sent him a picture of the two of us from the show and he said we could show that to our friends when we are 90, drinking coffee together in Italy.”
The competition requires two chefs to each deliver a five-course meal to a panel of judges in just 60 minutes, and for the challenger, it was his first time in Kitchen Stadium.
Posteraro and his two assistants — nephew Cristiano Posteraro and Jovie San Diego — left late on a Sunday night for Toronto, got up at 4 a.m. Monday and spent seven hours on set.
“We were all jet-lagged,” he recalled. “It is hard when you are out of your comfort zone. In a perfect world, we would spend a couple of days getting used to the kitchen.”
Plus, the chefs can only hope that their equipment will work the way they expect. Often it doesn’t, and Battle Crab was no exception.
“I had an issue with the blast chiller on my first dish, but you have to keep going,” he said. “Then later, Susur’s deep fryer didn’t work. Those kind of malfunctions are a much bigger challenge than the secret ingredient.”
While some chefs practise working under the crushing time constraints that the competition imposes, Posteraro does not.
“We work in those conditions every day in our kitchen, with customer requests, dietary restrictions,” he said.
“I have a very competent staff that takes care of the a la carte menu, but when people come and ask me to cook, I never play it safe. I always create.”
The secret ingredient is right in Posteraro’s West Coast wheelhouse, and he did not fail to surprise.
“I did a dessert with crab, the Iron Chef did not,” he said. “I do the pastry program in my restaurant, so I have that background. I wanted to highlight our Canadian culture, so I incorporated the crab into something like a doughnut.”
Competing on Iron Chef is the latest in an extraordinary run of accolades for Posteraro.
Cioppino’s was last week named to the 50 Top Italy list of the 50 best Italian restaurants in the world. The publication employs 350 restaurant inspectors around the world.
“We know we are doing good work, but the announcement came totally as a surprise,” said Posteraro, who prefers to stay true to his humble roots.
But in the past year or so, that has become increasingly difficult, especially after Posteraro was named to the Order of the Star of Italy, a knighthood conferred by the Italian president for representing Italian culture abroad.
Just months later, Cioppino’s received a Three Forks rating from Gambero Rosso, the Italian equivalent of the Michelin star. The Yaletown eatery is the first restaurant in Canada to receive its highest rating.
“The restaurant is 20 years old and has a crazy chef who is always after new creations every day, so it is great recognition for me and the staff who work so hard,” he said.
But he was particularly tickled to compete on Iron Chef, a franchise he discovered decades ago in its wildly eccentric first iteration from Japan. “I started to watch it many years ago when I was in Singapore and I loved it,” he said.