New York was buzzing yesterday. The rain stopped by the time our train arrived at Penn Station and it was a warm day. Before going to lunch at Morimoto in West Chelsea and later visiting the set of "Emeril Live", News Journal photographer Jennifer Corbett and I stopped into Mario Batali/Lidia Bastianich's joint venture Del Posto to check out the menu. It ain't cheap, but I'm DEFINITELY dining there on my next trip. It looks like an Italian food lover's dream; it also has a less formal, and cheaper, enoteca.
Morimoto New York is so different than Morimoto Philadelphia. The atmosphere is very slick and high tech, but it's absent color. (The Philly Chestnut Street eatery has a changing color scheme designed by Karim Rashid.) Masaharu Morimoto told me when the New York restaurant was being designed by Tadao Ando, he was very specific about an absent of color. It's mostly white and silvery with an amazing wall of plastic bottles. Morimoto also wanted high-tech bathrooms - and, O.M.G., he got them. The toilet seats have different settings - you can set them to warm, pulsate and there are all kinds of buttoms to push for, well, let's just say, cleaning. (Think bidet.) Seriously crazy and cool. This is the first time I can remember that a chef was much more interested in having me see his restaurant's bathrooms, rather than the kitchen.
A story is coming soon, but I have to tell you, Morimoto, one of the original Iron Chefs, is a very sweet guy. The last time we spoke - six years ago before the opening of his Philly eatery - he was still struggling with his English and he didn't seem very comfortable with his celebrity. All that has changed. He's still working on his English. But it clearly gets across his point of view, he can be very funny and he is deadly serious about his food. He checked out the prep station before the cooking began on "Emeril Live" - Morimoto was making dishes from his new cookbook "Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking" - and didn't like the fresh wasabi they had. Then Morimoto's assistant exchanged it with some wasabi he brought from his own kitchen. Also, the Iron Chef brought his own knives along, wrapped in a green and gold silk pouch.
When we walked over from his restaurant to the set of Emeril Live, Morimoto was like a rock star. People in the Chelsea Market stopped dead in their tracks and stared, someone yelled "LOOK! It's an Iron Chef!" and people were snapping photos like crazy. People love this guy. In the Green Room before the taping began, even Emeril seemed dazzled by Morimoto and the two have worked together before.
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