a little gossip

If by "原汁原味", you mean the show was originally created in Japan, yes, that I totally agree. But it's really hard to say whether Iron Chef Japan is more "原汁原味" in terms of culinary aspects; first of all-- all the chefs are all Japanese. Their cooking styles are very familiar to East Asian viewers, especially when you see the "天方地圓“ in French or Italian plating and presentation.

Here's a little dated gossip.....

Kenichi Chen was born in Tokyo, even he was trained in Sichuan for several years(?), but he sure puts his own twist in his version of Sichuan cuisine, for instance, the frequent usage of ketchup in the chilli sauce. (Just off topic a bit here, anything contains tomatoes cannot be considered as 'authentic' Chinese cuisine). He sure won many battles in the stadium, but do you remember the battle where the famous Hong Kong culinary critic Choi Lam was one of the judges? Remember the score Choi Lam gave Chen and the other Chinese Chef?

The second and last French Chef, "the King of Iron Chefs"--Hiroyuki Sakai unlike the first French Iron Chef, Yutaka Ishinabe, had never even been studied or trained in France, which in the beginning of Sakai's appointment of the show actually raised some negative voices.


The second Japanese Iron Chef, Masaharu Morimoto is famous and distinguished himself from other Japanese chefs by using European and American culinary ingridients/ elements in Japanese cooking; which I think cost him few losses in the show. Let's face it, most of the judges came to the show (the Japanese version) are Japanese. They were mostly looking for authenticity and familiarity from ingridients that are unusual to Japanese palate, and Morimoto's boldness and creativity were not usually recognized by the judges. And yes, due to the same reason--his boldness and courageous usages of European and American elements and ingridients had won him many battles and wowed the judges in Iron Chef America.