This is the first of several pre-Food Network episodes that I will be sharing with you over the next few weeks.
The challenger, Wayne Nish, is a Japanese American chef from New York City. The New York Times gave his restaurant 3 stars. He likes to use inspirations from many different cultures in his cuisine, creating beautiful and unique dishes. The chairman chooses a theme inspired by the challenger’s home town, the Big Apple. Sakai admits to being at a disadvantage because of his previous apple battle (305). Does the American challenger have what it takes to get a victory in his Grandfather’s homeland?
According to an article in the New York Times in February 2009, Wayne Nish is now the executive chef at restaurant Prive in Singapore. (Click Here and Here for more information about chef Nish.) I can’t find any mention of chef Nish on Prive’s current website, but he is mentioned on this menu (pdf) from 6/29/2009.
What makes this episode a rare and special treat for current Iron Chef fans is that it comes from the time before Iron Chef was aired on Food Network. It was recorded from one of the local stations broadcasting the show. It is in Japanese WITH English subtitles. I know you will enjoy being able to experience this rare episode not shown in North America in over 10 years.
There are two options for viewing this episode. The pop-up player will use the usual divx encoded file. This smaller, lower quality file can also be downloaded directly using the “Download File” option. Also in the download menu this time is an option to download a higher quality VOB file (approx. 1GB). (You can play the vob file in VLC Player)
New in the video database this week: 446s – Apple Battle – Sakai vs. Nish (subbed)
October 4th, 2009 at 12:16 am
I had the pleasure, along with family and friends, of dining at March, Nish’s former restaurant on Manhattan’s East Side, back in late 2001. The full tasting menu was quite good, and afterwards, Chef Nish, who had just returned from a hunting trip in Canada, sat down with us for 30 minutes. He is a very intelligent and well-read fellow. However, he was a complete arrogant a-hole about IC and his experience. It seems he thought he was a superior chef to Sakai and that the show was rigged against foreign competitors, especially Americans. I imagine that would come as a big surprise to Ron Siegel. Having had the latter’s food, I can assure you that as good as Nish seems to be, he’s nowhere near RS as a chef. If I can locate the digital photos of the dishes we ate, I will see if they can be posted here.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Excellent post! I had seen some of these episodes in the past, but never expected that someone would have a copy. The *.vob format is the way to go – the video artifacts are still there but the video image is much clearer (I’m watching Battle Apple right now).
Thanks to your contributor for providing these episodes, and to you for being able to furnish them. I’m really looking forward to the others.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Tetsujin070561 – Thanks for sharing your story. If you do find the photos, we would be glad to post them here if you wish.
October 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I tried to download the VOB file, and it would take forever for the download screen to pop up…can you please check the link to make sure it works?
BTW, as a big Iron Chef fan, thanks for the rare uploads…this is a gift and thanks for sharing!!
October 5th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
It just worked for me. If you continue to have problems, let me know and I can send you the direct link.
October 5th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Still can’t get it go beyond connecting in the tab…can you send me the link?
October 6th, 2009 at 5:27 am
Thanks to the mysterious source for providing these episodes, and thanks to tuthead for putting the first of them up for us to enjoy.
As others have said, it’s an interesting variation to have the original Japanese with sub-titles rather than the slightly re-written FN overdubs. It makes following the original episodes without sub-titles or overdubs at least slightly less confusing!
Thanks again.