Eater has posted a pretty entertaining interview that Urbandaddy conducted with Masaharu Morimoto, the Iron Chef who just opened his namesake restaurant in Chelsea Market a couple weeks ago. He's a pretty funny guy...
UD: Any issues about choosing the name Morimoto for the restaurant?
MM: My first name is Masaharu. When I came to open a restaurant
here, I thought I would name it Mori, or Moto, or Masa, or Haru.
But—there is already a restaurant called Mori here, there is Moto here,
Masa here, and Haru here. So I have to do “Morimoto.” I thought, is
Morimoto too long for a restaurant name? But we did it.
And while the Iron Chef probably wouldn't put crap in his mouth, the same cannot be said for his ears (but at least he's honest)...
UD: If you could download music to your iPod, what would be on it?
MM: Easy listening! Mostly Japanese songs. Some American ones,
like Kenny G. Easy, easy, you know. I like to listen like this, aaah
[singing, leans back with his eyes closed].
One night in July of 2002, Morimoto, his wife, and myself were the sole customers at Jewel Bako's sushi bar for what seemed like two hours. I was too shy (or sober) to say anything to him but he seemed nice enough. I'm dying to go to Morimoto but conflicting reports keep me from shelling out the dough. Blog Augieland, with something like seven visits (keep in mind that all his visits were at the $200 and up Omakase Bar section of the place), loves it; Andrea Strong, with one visit (not at the Omakase bar), basically slammed the place; while a somewhat mean-spirited conversation (portions of which were just yanked by mods) on Egullet is raging even though no one participating in it seems to have eaten there.
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