12/08/2021
I had occaision to work with Iron Chef Sakai in Hawaii a few years ago...this is what happened at dinner one night..
So chef Sakai and I were chatting after our demo’s and he asked me if I was going to the Chef Sakai dinner being held at the hotel we were staying at…(my English teacher will be unamused for that last bit of bad grammar)…We had to communicate through a translator, I speak no Japanese and Chef Sakai doesn’t speak much more English.. I said I didn’t know about it and Chef asked me to be his guest.. So when I got back to the hotel I called the special events coordinator and was told the dinner had been sold out for 3 months…CRAP…left a message for Chef and said there was no more space in the room…. 10 minutes later I got a call from the translator and was told that there will be space for us at the event and to show up at 6:30. We got dressed in our finest duds and headed down to the dining room. The Maître d’ approached us and said that chef Sakai had requested that a special table be set for us…WOW How cool We walked through the room past tables of 8, 10 and 12 and more, to the only table for 2, set in the middle of the room. As the room began to fill up and the dinner was starting, Chef Sakai came to our table and asked if he could join us? Of course we said yes and Chef and his translator sat with us…The room was full of Sakai fans, many of them Japanese I’m sure, but there he was sitting with us…MAN HOW COOL IS THIS….The sommelier (wine steward) stopped by to pour our first wine and Chef Sakai spoke to him in French >>>>>HEY I speak French…well at least better than my non existing Japanese. We both laughed and he told the translator she was fired..JK I’m sure, my girl Irma speaks French too, so the only person who couldn’t understand what we are saying was the translator. All eyes were on us, or more likely Chef Sakai….who is that white guy, why is chef sitting with them??? OH he’s just a North Carolina dirt farmer…It turns out in Japan being a farmer is a noble profession, and well it should be. Farmers are also wealthy, not in money but as land owners and there isn’t a lot of land to own. The point is Chef treated Irma and myself like the star he is. Oh and the meal was great too.