Morimoto and Moi

JEWELS IN THE CROWN: The final platter of Marcia Spink's omakase featured rosettes and checkered pieces—none of which Morimoto had served before. Photo By: Bruce Schimmel

TV's Iron Chef passes a major culinary milestone in the service of a Philadelphia patron.

by Bruce Schimmel

It's the cooking equivalent of running a hundred marathons, with a set of new obstacles for every race. Chef Masaharu Morimoto, of Iron Chef fame, has just completed one of his toughest challenges—and he did it all for an audience of just one person. He returned recently to Philadelphia to prepare a long and complicated meal for patron Marcia Spink.

Spink lives in Old City, and by day she watches over Philadelphia's air quality as an EPA administrator. But on most Monday or Tuesday evenings for the past year and a half, Spink has gone to Morimoto's sushi bar, mounted one of its tall chairs, and ordered the toughest and most expensive item on the restaurant's menu: a flight of courses called omakase (oh-MAH-kah-say).

Tonight is Spink's 100th omakase.

In English, omakase means literally "the choice is yours," but this $120 prix fixe is more challenging than the usual chef's choice. The size of repertoire it demands is gigantic.

In the 100 omakases Spink has eaten—each containing eight to 10 courses—Morimoto promised her that every dish would be unique. With the more than 800 courses Chef Morimoto and staff have prepared, she has not eaten the same dish twice. And, yes, they've kept a running log in the kitchen.

"I'd call in the morning to let them know I was coming," says Spink, "and the chefs would try to figure out what to serve me."

Tonight, the Iron Chef himself is presiding over Spink's 100th omakase. Having just returned from India, where he opened a new restaurant at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Bombay, Chef Morimoto looks like a King of Cuisine. A diamond stud glints from his left ear; his right wrist is wrapped in a gold Rolex. Dressed in chef's whites, he stands behind the sushi bar, his arms crossed, stolid as a samurai. A team of eight sous chefs swerve around him, flipping the fiery contents of saucepans into the air, and slicing up raw fish with the precision of surgeons.

Bowing slightly, the chef presents his first course: A mountain of chilled shellfish, featuring muscular-looking crab claws, sparkling sashimi and tiny oysters heaped with caviar and decorated with a sheet of daikon radish carved to suggest a fisherman's net.

From the fishy landscape, a red snapper's head looks out. Over the fish's mouth, someone has put a sticker that reads "Tuesday"—today's day.

"You see, it's fresh," says Morimoto, with a hint of a smile. "I did it for you today, Marcia," he adds in halting English. "Thank you, Chef," replies Spink, beaming with delight.

Spink helps herself to a pale pink shrimp. "It's probably still alive," she whispers, as she dips a glistening piece in a chilled sauce of rare matsutaki mushrooms.

This special evening is not the first time Spink and Morimoto have shared the limelight. Spink appeared previously with the chef in a Discovery Channel program, and is arguably the chef's most accomplished patron.

In the world of fancy dining, Marcia Spink is known to possess a bec fin—an educated palate. She lists Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse among other high-profile chefs who've cooked for her. But for her, the man she calls "Morimoto-san" is the master. Since his restaurant opened, Spink estimates having spent upwards of $15,000 to train her palate for his art.

Spink knows lots about this cuisine. She speaks knowledgeably about the five-figure battles that Morimoto regularly participates in—bidding for whole tuna that's still on board in the high seas.

She explains how raw fish, flash-frozen at minus 60 degrees in special freezers, has a more exquisite texture than strictly fresh fish. And among Spink's favorite items is that most precious of tuna, toro, the fatty belly portion, presented on a strip of rice, with the grains ideally all facing the same way.

"You pick it up with your hands," she says, as she presses the fishy side of the sushi against her tongue, and lets the gelatinous pink flesh melt down her throat.

She recalls one time, when one of Morimoto's chefs emerged from the back kitchen to present her with a king crab that was still alive, its arms waving. "He snapped off a leg, and prepared it in a matter of moments." Another time, Morimoto carved off the front fin of a huge fish, grilled it whole over an open flame, before extracting a morsel for her pleasure.

Her 100th omakase continues, with a soup of white mushrooms, a noodle course of fresh lobster and lobster mushrooms, and servings of foie gras, Kobe beef and other delicacies.

Meanwhile, behind the counter, amidst the crush of dinners to be prepped, Morimoto spends 20 minutes teaching his chefs how to cut ruby-red jack salmon into precise wedges to create a rosette of fish that will garnish Spink's final platter of sushi and sashimi.

During the three-hour meal, Spink and Morimoto exchange few words. She shows her appreciation through her expressions, her bows, in a few words of Japanese. It is a subtle exchange between artist and patron.

In a city where chefs are supposedly treated like rock stars, Spink says she's appalled by the shabby treatment toward Morimoto she's witnessed. "People come here, yell out his name, pull out their camera and start flashing pictures. That's not only disrespectful, it's dangerous. Those are sharp knives they're using."

As the dinner winds down, Morimoto's maitre d', sous chefs and a few regulars come by to congratulate Spink and Morimoto on the 100th omakase and its hundreds of unique dishes.

"Next time, it will be number 101," says Spink. "And I think we could repeat something. Would that be all right, Chef?"