Iron Chef

Battle Philadelphia commenced in late October, when Roy Yamaguchi opened Roy's at 15th and Sansom Streets a scant two weeks before Masaharu Morimoto opened his restaurant, Morimoto, at 723 Chestnut St. Publicity was assured as the two hotshot "Iron Chefs" - Morimoto, a regular on the bizarre beat-the-clock Japanese cooking show seen on cable's Food Network, and Yamaguchi, a combatant on UPN's Americanized sequel - were poised to make Center City...

NEW YORK - Fwip-fwip-fwip goes the vegetable peeler, slicing a daikon radish into white ribbons that, in an Italian restaurant, you might think were fettuccine. You're in the open kitchen at Morimoto's Manhattan outpost, a bright white shrine to Japanese fusion. The strips of daikon - a staple of Asian cooking - will end up tossed in a rich tomato-basil sauce. Italian? Japanese? "Twisted," says the guy wielding the peeler: chef-owner Masaharu Morimoto. "I don't believe in rules.

Bring canned food, get a set of Thanksgiving recipes. That is the deal to be offered to people who stop by Tuesday at the new Crowne Plaza Valley Forge Hotel in King of Prussia. Visitors who donate a nonperishable item for charity can observe the hotel's Taste of Thanksgiving cook-off featuring 10 chefs from around the Philadelphia area. The chefs will cook updated versions of traditional Thanksgiving dishes, said Laurel Fairworth, a spokeswoman for the event. Their recipes for the dishes will be swapped for the donations.

Every father has to share his daughter someday. It just happened a lot sooner than I expected when my 11-year-old, Alice, recently informed me that I was no longer the sole person responsible for her budding interest in a culinary career. After toting her along on hundreds of restaurant reviews since the time I could tuck her under the table in a car seat, I wondered who the other scoundrel could be. But as I watched the flicker of fanciful cakes from the TV screen twirling in her smitten brown eyes, I knew.

DEVELOPER David Grasso hopes to bring a "state-of-the-art live-music venue" to Fishtown. Grasso, a musician who plays guitar in Brothers from Another and who owns the record label F.O.F Entertainment, previously tried to open a House of Blues at the Grande (15th & Chestnut) and along Washington Avenue in South Philly. "Between the TLA and Susquehanna Bank Center there is a gap in that space for a quality entertainment venue, for a place that bands want to play and people want to go and have a quality experience," Grasso said yesterday.

How to sort through University City?s many culinary options during Dining Days? While there?s not a bad choice among the participants, here are 10 sure to satisfy. City Tap House: Come for one of the 60 craft beers on tap; stay for chef Al Paris' beer-loving menu. Paris delivers the gastro-pub goods on this four-course menu with stand outs like an Italian accented chop salad, classic Margarita pizza and zesty jerk salmon filet with a chutney glaze. ($30) 3925 Walnut St., 215-662-0105.

It isn't often that the PR hype machine churns out global bulletins on the latest restaurant hot spot in downtown Media. Actually, it never happens - even though I have been waiting. Media, you see, has one of the most charming downtown districts in the region that has yet to land a serious destination restaurant. There are a few bright spots glimmering for attention - an outpost of Margaret Kuo's, a decent-but-modest Indian nook called Shere-E-Punjab, and yet another Iron Hill Brewery.

ANOTHER CELEBRITY chef has seen the light. This time it's Iron Chef and 2009 James Beard Award-winner Michael Symon who's embracing beer in a big way, partnering with Pilsner Urquell to promote the lager's compatibility with food. "I think beer is becoming more and more accepted" as a part of gourmet cuisine, Symon told me in a telephone interview from New York, where he was preparing for a live cooking demonstration featuring Pilsner Urquell in his recipes. "And as beer gets better, that's only going to continue to grow.

Food-truck battles and cupcake wars; little people crafting chocolate confections and five-star chefs forging masterpieces with ingredients from a vending machine; molecular gastronomes making scientific ideas edible, and D-list celebs opening a restaurant. Full yet? Food shows were once largely limited to quiet PBS instructional fare - like how to calmly make a cheese souffle under Julia Child's tutelage. While there are still plenty of series teaching viewers how to cook (there are now two channels devoted to food with the recent launch of the Cooking Channel, an edgy spin-off of the Food Network)

Jose Garces, who has been parlaying his status as an Iron Chef on the Food Network to build a dining empire, will open three restaurants at Revel Atlantic City, the $2.4 billion megacasino scheduled to open in the spring. The project catapults Garces, already the city's most prominent celebrity chef, to yet another level. Few restaurateurs have grown as quickly as Garces, 39, who opened Amada, on Chestnut Street, in 2005, and won his national television deal nearly two years ago. Garces owns seven restaurants in Philadelphia (with an eighth on the way next year)

Food-truck battles and cupcake wars; little people crafting chocolate confections and five-star chefs forging masterpieces with ingredients from a vending machine; molecular gastronomes making scientific ideas edible, and D-list celebs opening a restaurant. Full yet? Food shows were once largely limited to quiet PBS instructional fare - like how to calmly make a cheese souffle under Julia Child's tutelage. While there are still plenty of series teaching viewers how to cook (there are now two channels devoted to food with the recent launch of the Cooking Channel, an edgy spin-off of the Food Network)

Pro athletes hit the gym to train for the big game. Jose Garces works out in the kitchen. In addition to his role as owner of Amada, Tinto, Village Whiskey, and four other Philadelphia restaurants, Garces wears the starched jacket of an Iron Chef, one of seven culinary household names who battle challengers on the Food Network. With its campily scowling "chairman," sparkling Kitchen Stadium, and flashy graphics, Iron Chef America might seem like a prime-time game show.

DEVELOPER David Grasso hopes to bring a "state-of-the-art live-music venue" to Fishtown. Grasso, a musician who plays guitar in Brothers from Another and who owns the record label F.O.F Entertainment, previously tried to open a House of Blues at the Grande (15th & Chestnut) and along Washington Avenue in South Philly. "Between the TLA and Susquehanna Bank Center there is a gap in that space for a quality entertainment venue, for a place that bands want to play and people want to go and have a quality experience," Grasso said yesterday.

How to sort through University City's many culinary options during Dining Days? While there's not a bad choice among the participants, here are 10 sure to satisfy. City Tap House: Come for one of the 60 craft beers on tap; stay for chef Al Paris' beer-loving menu. Paris delivers the gastro-pub goods on this four-course menu with stand outs like an Italian accented chop salad, classic Margarita pizza and zesty jerk salmon filet with a chutney glaze. ($30) 3925 Walnut St., 215-662-0105.

Every father has to share his daughter someday. It just happened a lot sooner than I expected when my 11-year-old, Alice, recently informed me that I was no longer the sole person responsible for her budding interest in a culinary career. After toting her along on hundreds of restaurant reviews since the time I could tuck her under the table in a car seat, I wondered who the other scoundrel could be. But as I watched the flicker of fanciful cakes from the TV screen twirling in her smitten brown eyes, I knew.

Jose Garces, Philadelphia's "it" chef-restaurateur, was announced last night as the newest member of the Food Network's Iron Chef America team - not only earning him bragging rights, but also directing an international spotlight on his fast-growing empire run out of Old City. On last night's episode of The Next Iron Chef, Garces, 37, won a cooking duel against New York chef Jehangir Mehta, capping a season that began Oct. 4 with 10 contestants. Garces hosted a boisterous viewing party last night at his West Philadelphia Mexican restaurant, Distrito, that attracted several hundred fans and members of his close-knit staff who shrieked at the announcement shortly before 10 p.m. Chef Seamus Mullen, who was eliminated on last week's show, came down from New York to see Garces and Mehta create a multicourse meal out of various ribs.

ANOTHER CELEBRITY chef has seen the light. This time it's Iron Chef and 2009 James Beard Award-winner Michael Symon who's embracing beer in a big way, partnering with Pilsner Urquell to promote the lager's compatibility with food. "I think beer is becoming more and more accepted" as a part of gourmet cuisine, Symon told me in a telephone interview from New York, where he was preparing for a live cooking demonstration featuring Pilsner Urquell in his recipes. "And as beer gets better, that's only going to continue to grow.

Jose Garces was Latino way before Latino was cool. Before it was prefixed with nuevo. Before the Chicago of his childhood had a single Latin restaurant - "zero," he recalls - though the occasional taqueria had begun to sprout. He is a stocky, serious, focused 36 now, the toast of the town - a recent Iron Chef win under his belt, three tapas restaurants, Amada, Tinto and Distrito, climbing the charts, with one (Peruvian-Chinese Chifa) on the way. Maybe two, if you count the low-key-burger-high-end-whiskey joint he has up his sleeve.