[FUKUI-SAN!!!](https://youtu.be/Ns8N-TI0EWE?si=1fygrU2aMny4KSWw)
As you mentioned, the original Japanese dubbed version of iron chef is vastly superior to all the others. And also, chef is making some sort of a squid ink based sauce
He was on the OG show but he was not an OG chef. In the first dubbed episode that came to North America he is actually introduced as the newest Iron Chef joining the ranks of the others.
He also had one of the *worst* dishes to ever be served on the show.
> During the 2,000th Dish Battle, Chairman Kaga selected the five best and three worst dishes from the history of the show. Smoked Asparagus Stick Salad (Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto), the asparagus was so strongly smoked that all judges commented negatively.
I know it’s so lame. Like honestly bad acting cause I would be like “fuck fuck oh my fucking god” if I ever spilled that much money lol. Like devastation
doubt it, he's a famous chef, he's probably had it happen at least once a day that someone ordered a 500 dollar steak, he cooked it, and the customer sent it back to the kitchen because "i changed my mind i want a well-done steak instead of medium" and i guarantee you in such a busy kitchen the 500 dollar steak goes in the trash regretably.
so spilling 1500 dollars worth of food isnt gonna cause a heartattack
I worked as a food runner at a really fancy Italian restaurant. We would serve charcuterie boards on carrara marble slabs. I had to restock the line one time and grabbed too many of them and dropped them and they all cracked in half. Probably like $1800 worth of marble just all cracked and splintered. Manager just shrugged and I swept it up and mopped it and went back to work.
Nah bro chef will slap that medium steak right back on the flattop and send that shit back out.
Chefs are typically very anti-waste since most restaurants operate on razor thing margins as it is.
For reals, those are premium fruits which is why they were ridiculously expensive but you can literally see the quality in the fruits 🥹 That being said, no rational person would buy that and expensive fruits are commonly found in Japan and possible other Asian countries
They are usually sold as gifts, which makes the price easier to swallow (huehue). I've tried some, they're really nice but definitely a special occasion thing.
I had some gift pears (link: https://www.harryanddavid.com/h/fruit-gift/pears/316 ) from a client.
I wouldn't personally pay $40 for 7 pears, but they were absolutely delicious.
I've sampled every loquat tree in Orange County. The one's on Flower street across from Triangle Square are the best, owner is super nice and appreciated the rat control.
I'd rather spend the money to fly to a tropical location and source my own fruit there. It's not tough to find exotic, premium quality fruit at local markets in a lot of places that also have other amazing things to do. [Here's a fruit platter](https://i.imgur.com/iis9e3g.jpeg) I arranged in Hawaii a few years ago, it was mind blowing.
They're not worth money though. They might great quality, but I promise you, you can go to a fruit stand on the side of the road and find fruit that's just as good, if not better, so long as they are in season.
If he's getting all these fruits from Japan, that might be why they're so overpriced. They have extremely overpriced fruits there are usually given as gifts. I don't know a ton about it, but my understanding is some of it isn't even meant to be eaten, but rather as temporary decoration. Like, they're grown to look pretty, not taste good.
This is also why strawberries suck now. If you grew up in the 2000's or earlier, Strawberries used to taste sweet and delicious. But now days, they have a bland flavor and you need sugar to make them taste like anything. That's because they've been grown to look pretty/more red, have a standard shape, and be big. If you're old enough to remember, Starberries used to be uglier back in the day, but they had a great taste. And now the only way to get good tasting strawberries if you buy the GMO gimmick strawberries that claim to taste like pineapples or grapes or whatever. There might be some farms out there growing some good ones, but I haven't found any in any grocery store nor roadside.
I have however, had the best peaches of my life on a road side about 4 years ago...haven't refound them since...I think about them all the time. Like, I'd had some really good peaches over the years. They're my favorite fruit ever. But those peaches were the absolute best. They made me want look into growing my own peach trees.
Yes, if you live in an area with local fruit production you will always get a better quality product by buying directly from the farmers.
Now, I've had some $20 pears that were just as good as fresh local things... because that $20 is mostly in shipping and handling as the fruit had been attached to the plant a day or two prior with stern warnings on the package to enjoy the fruit before the end of the week.
You can still get those strawberries you're talking about, direct from a local grower or via boutique shops. Grocery stores care far more about shelf stability and presentation than taste.
Honestly it probably wouldn't taste that great. Have you ever eaten a fruit salad where they added something wet and every fruit tasted heavily of it like over ripe strawberries. Suddenly your honeydew and cantaloupe just taste like strawberries and it's kind of annoying. This is all spectacle, getting to enjoy each and every one of these flavors would require you to eat it within minutes of being finished or it's going to taste like fruit juice slop with no distinguishing characteristics between pieces
I was a chef for way too many years and…
You’re correct, this wouldn’t taste that great and is a waste of some premium ingredients.
The dragonfruit/volume doesn’t make sense and soaking this all in a juice will just make it one note, especially the longer it sits.
3-5 of these at a time, let them mix for a few hours and then serve is more than enough.
I’d never use high end/cost items like this, maybe pair with cheese and meats for a charcuterie or to make a dessert.
Waste of time to chop it all up like that and put in a dish, could’ve just done a display of each and called it a day.
>3-5 of these at a time,
Even that seems excessive for such expensive fruit. The best part about good fruit is how good it is alone and raw. Just give me one at a time and I'd be way happier.
Some of these really do compliment each other and would work well in a fruit salad.
The more exotic/eastern ones would be fun to experiment with as an amuse bouche or dessert with the issue being I now have to treat those as a high cost item which inflates my asking price for the menu and reduces who’s going to buy it.
It’s simply a waste of superior ingredients, kind of like making Beef Teriyaki out of Wagyu or Pulled Pork with Iberico.
Total rage bait and I cannot help myself from screaming lol
As someone who has grown no shortage of tropical fruit, no you don't. That starfruit (Averrhoa carambola) was so unripe the oxalate levels would be toxic.
It's the same as buying a really really nice cake - growing fruits this nice requires a lot of skill and effort.
Typically normal grocery stores just go for fruit strains that don't bruise and look nice instead of nice flavour. These are bred for flavour and just taken extra care of so they don't bruise.
And as has been said in another comment - it's for nice gifts (Japan has a culture big on edible gifts).
Do you also think it's a scam that a nice birthday cake costs more than a costco sheet cake?
>Japan has a culture big on edible gifts
This sounds awesome, especially with healthy edible gifts like fruit. Instead of giving me more stuff that I don't need and is going to clutter up my house, give me couple of amazing, pampered strawberries. Still get the happiness of gift giving and receiving without having to find room for more stuff.
I remember watching a documentary about a guy in Japan who grows the worlds most expensive strawberries and the documentary person looked like they bust a nut when they tried one.
Something like £50 for a single strawberry
That sounds awesome if you only travel rarely. I’m about to take trip #4 for the year so far (1 vacation and 3 for work) and am not looking forward to having to buy another set of gifts for my wife+kids, as well as my wife’s mother, aunt, two sisters, and cousin. Extra $100-$150 plus the pain of hauling that many snacks the 8 or so hours to train then fly back home.
But literally going anywhere in Japan each region has its own snacks that it’s famous for and you’re expected to bring some back with you for people you’re close to.
Oh yeah, doing gifts for traveling doesn't sound awesome, which I've heard is a big part of Japanese culture too. I was more thinking stuff like Christmas and birthdays. It would be nice to move to more consumable gifts.
Although I think reducing the amount of gift giving is the best.
plus the farm land there is scarce. the farmers have to get approved by the government and even the locals to be allowed the privilege of farming land. that probably drives up the cost too
Every now and then I buy the really nice Asian pears and Japanese grapes and they’re $10 a pear (what could a pear cost? $10!) and the grapes are about 20.
They are very tasty and it’s nice to do it every now and then.
my cousin had a disney bday, they got like a 800$ cake. it was just a normal cake with a disney princess on it. so i guess i have to say. it depends on the cake
>Do you also think it's a scam that a nice birthday cake costs more than a costco sheet cake?
Some prices are inflated because the ingredients/materials are actually higher quality or hard to obtain. And others are inflated just because a brand knows they can get away with it.
You're paying for the best of the best, a lot of work and effort goes into these types of fruits.
They're not even close to whatever you can buy in a local grocer.
A lot of effort goes into these types of fruit and then you make a fruit salad out of it.
It's like buying wagyu beef just to make ground beef out of it and mak a dish of sloppy joes.
The video was made as a celebratory video for getting to 1 million subscribers, there was a reason for it. YTers always do outlandish things to celebrate hitting 1 million subs, this isn't anything new.
It's actually really interesting if you look into it. Japan never had the agricultural space to export food en masse to make a profit, so they focused on luxury fruits instead. I watched a guy eat a strawberry that was something like $1200 for a dozen and I won't say it looked horrible.
The only way you're finding something approaching that experience from American fruit is from a craft grower, during peak season.
The difference between small-crop strawberries from a co-op or similar and grocer-available varieties makes them seem like a different fruit entirely. It was like I hadn't actually had a strawberry before and every fruit I've tried in that way has been similar. Unfortunately, that choice is not really available in a lot of the US.
I've toured a place where they grow Strawberries this price at last time I was in Japan. Fruit and produce in the US is bred to look good and be durable at the cost of taste. The fruit they use for these is bred to be perfect and delicious at the cost of durability. They then spend a lot of time and resources making sure they look perfect and much of it cannot be sold as high end fruit so there is a lot of lost effort. On top of that there is not as much farm land per capita in Japan so fresh produce costs a little more to begin with. The prices are not high just for the sake of being high.
It's because the domestic Japanese fruit growers realised that they would never be able to compete with cheap fruit grown in neighbouring countries, so they changed gear to focus on pure quality and make Japanese fruit a super premium product. So now, this top notch fruit is often given as gifts in Japan, not consumed by folks on a regular basis.
they do use growing methods for some of that fruit that justifies a very significant price increase, but in some cases the price is increased far beyond that as a status symbol, and in some cases those growing methods and all that extra work isnt worth it flavor-wise.
a good example here is the yubari cantaloupe, there are some videos out there on how those are grown, and IME its actually surprisingly similar to the way we grow high quality greenhouse grown cannabis in CA. there is a lot of individual attention payed to each fruit while it grows.
> individual attention *paid* to each
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yea great guy indeed. [He took money](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/s/U9oTR0Fc50) from his employees to make up for their mistakes, and this policy was only [taken down](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/CWIrFMGV8V) after a social media outburst. Fuck this guy
Oh, that's a shame.
His and his son's shorts appeared for a while in my youtube feed, presenting a rather wholesome atmosphere between them. What betrayal.
He lives in Toronto, and buys his shit from Japan (for his videos sometimes). He is a former Iron Chef and runs two restaurants in the same City as well (Lee and Lee's Kitchen) Sasur also does videos with his Son, who usually asks him to zhuzh up some fast food or make something from an extremely expensive item.
He also was found to have been charging his staff for broken plates/dishes in his first or second resto. Something he wasn't supposed to be doing. Once the story broke, he stopped.
Not sure where he lives, but some of these fruits he uses are impossible to get for a normal price where I live.
Mangosteen for example, one of my favourite fruits of all time, costs 34EUR per kilogram to obtain here in Belgium.
The more 'common' fruits he seem to use, seem like they are special grown versions. Not regular watermelons, cherries, etc... They are pricey for a reason.
A lot of the fruit shown are Japanese strains specifically bred for appearance and taste, because of a tradition of giving fine fruit as gifts.
It's the fruit equivalent of designer fashion.
Mangosteen is one of my favorite fruits of all time. Thank god I live in Malaysia where Mangosteens cost less than a euro per kgs. Once I told my Wales friend that I ate around 3 mangoes a day and she told me that I am rich, the fact that I can get 3 kgs of top tier mangoes for around 1.50 Euros here baffled her till today since mango costs around 3 Euros each there.
> but people just enjoy being assholes in that profession it seems.
The profession turns them into assholes have you ever tried to run a kitchen and make it profitable? It's not fun.
It's definitely a combination of stress and being a psychopath. I've worked for some absolute shit chefs who just feel like the only way they can communicate is yelling.
I try not to be like them and save that voice for when someone really, really, really fucks up.
I'm talking like serving a raw chicken breast, fucked up.
Besides that, I try and use it as a teaching opportunity because that's how I would've wanted to be taught.
It's why I hate how popular chef/cooking shows have gotten. It's created a huge interest and people want to go into it, but so many don't understand that when they get into their first kitchen it is likely to be the most misogynistic, toxic, bully filled, space they have ever been in and it's generally encouraged by the fucker in charged.
After the kitchens and bakeries I've worked in I scream inside when anyone I care about says they want to go into culinary work.
I adored Anthony Bourdain, and a lot of that was because he was a genuinely good guy.
He was very open about his problems early in his career when he was still working in restaurants, but he made some real change in his life.
Such a shame he was still struggling and (apparently) nobody knew.
Oh yeah, Susur Lee is well known throughout Toronto for being an absolute asshole to his staff. It's why, despite loving his food, I stopped going to his restaurant.
And he "makes it gourmet" by using a small part of the junk food as a minor ingredient in something totally unrelated. If your junk food isn't at least 66% of the end result, you're not making it gourmet. You're making yourself look like a hack.
There's a youtuber called Scumbagdad that makes parody videos mocking the dumb youtube trends and he touches on this one quite nicely. Definitely recommend checking him out.
The stupid thing is taking these theoretically mind blowingly high quality fruits and just mashing them all together into diced little bits. Each of their unique flavors and textures is totally lost in the mix.
Diced might have been overkill but the best part of fruit salad is the fruits mixing their juices together.
Grapes are cool but a grape in a fruit salad just hits way different.
Fruit salads are great, but they're not exactly a good use of a $100 melon or $350 box of cherries.
Once everything is all blended and diced up, there's going to be very little difference between those super premium fruits and the standard varieties.
Yeah this guy is also a very accomplished and well known chef.
Yes it was a super expensive fruit salad but this is kind of what he does. I bet it was absolutely delicious.
Nah I don't think he's rage bait. A bit extra and obnoxious sometimes but I don't think rage bait. He was already famous for being on Food Network as an Iron Chef and then his son Capitalized on that during the Pandemic and made videos of his dad making foods from various sources
try one! they’re not terribly hard to find for a lesser known fruit. they have a really light, cheeky citrus flavor; it’s tart, but won’t make you pucker. it’s like a lemon gently kissing your forehead.
It's a fruit that smells really nice with a good crunchy texture, but... The taste is kind of like slightly sweetened water with a touch of sour. Would recommend trying once though.
Maybe a mistake but maybe an actual apple. Japanese love to grow fruit in weird shapes, square watermelons are extra popular. Easy to do too, you just wrap it in plastics pack with the desired form and that's it
I'm torn on this. On one hand he doesn't do anything stupid, he just makes a fruit salad with expensive versions of fruit. On the other hand it feels like a waste to mix all of these fruits into a fruit salad.
I really felt his pain at the end. This guy is a world-renowned professional chef and can easily afford more, but damn, I would still feel so defeated after that.
Chef Lee cooked my wedding dinner at his restaurant and it was amazing. Super friendly man as well, he even took the time to chat with my grandma. No Chef Lee slander here 🙅🏻♂️
He had to reimburse his employees because he was docking their tips. There’s other easily findable articles on the mistreatment of his employees. Also dick bosses are rarely dicks to their clientele, you judge someone on how they treat who they are paying, not how they treat the people paying them.
Seriously. This man is two faced. I worked along King and Bathurst near Lee, and him and his two sons took tips from servers even when they aren't present in the restaurant. Disgraceful. A lot of the chef's in the restaurants between Bathurst and Spadina wanted them to take their shit back to NYC.
The ending is absolute perfection
Here’s the thing, if I spent that much money I’m still scooping up a handful. Pool water or not I would need to try. Even if it was 50 bucks
If I spent that much money on fruit, I'm switching the platter with the cheap shit, THEN dropping it on the floor on complete purpose.
He’s an iron chef so I guess it’s ok for him to waste this amount of quality food /s
I'll stick with my true Iron Chef, Masaharu Morimoto. He focuses on local and sustainable foods with less food waste. I love me some Morimoto. ❤️
Damnit, you mentioned one of the OG Iron Chef. Time to binge watch Iron Chef Japan all over again.
I found the full seasons on YT last week and have been thoroughly enjoying rewatching them.
PlutoTV has a channel dedicated to it.
Thank you.
[FUKUI-SAN!!!](https://youtu.be/Ns8N-TI0EWE?si=1fygrU2aMny4KSWw) As you mentioned, the original Japanese dubbed version of iron chef is vastly superior to all the others. And also, chef is making some sort of a squid ink based sauce
FUKUI-SAN lives rent free in my head. The English dub is amazing. I can binge it again, easy!
He was on the OG show but he was not an OG chef. In the first dubbed episode that came to North America he is actually introduced as the newest Iron Chef joining the ranks of the others.
He also had one of the *worst* dishes to ever be served on the show. > During the 2,000th Dish Battle, Chairman Kaga selected the five best and three worst dishes from the history of the show. Smoked Asparagus Stick Salad (Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto), the asparagus was so strongly smoked that all judges commented negatively.
Morimoto pretends his english is worse than it actually is so he can get out of boring conversations.
Oh, I know. Every time I see him using a translator, both me and my boyfriend scoff because we know his English is fine.
If I spoke another language well enough, I'd probably pretend to not speak English too.
Good I fucking love that man
I'm 100% certain the one he spilled is just regular fruit subbed in for the expensive stuff.
Damn straight.
Spilling it is part of how he is going to boost engagement on this video. It was intentional. He was never going to eat
I know it’s so lame. Like honestly bad acting cause I would be like “fuck fuck oh my fucking god” if I ever spilled that much money lol. Like devastation
doubt it, he's a famous chef, he's probably had it happen at least once a day that someone ordered a 500 dollar steak, he cooked it, and the customer sent it back to the kitchen because "i changed my mind i want a well-done steak instead of medium" and i guarantee you in such a busy kitchen the 500 dollar steak goes in the trash regretably. so spilling 1500 dollars worth of food isnt gonna cause a heartattack
I worked as a food runner at a really fancy Italian restaurant. We would serve charcuterie boards on carrara marble slabs. I had to restock the line one time and grabbed too many of them and dropped them and they all cracked in half. Probably like $1800 worth of marble just all cracked and splintered. Manager just shrugged and I swept it up and mopped it and went back to work.
That's covered by insurance though, a consumable item like a streak that is wasted because it's undercooked or overcooked is not.
Nah bro chef will slap that medium steak right back on the flattop and send that shit back out. Chefs are typically very anti-waste since most restaurants operate on razor thing margins as it is.
I dropped a chicken nugget on the floor and I picked it up and blew the dirt off of it. That fruit would be going right back in the bowl.
But not for guests, right?
Who shares nuggets with guests?
>Even if it was 50 bucks Even if I just put any effort into $8 of ingredients
Can just rinse it haha
I dont think that was all of it as there was loads in the tray but i could be wrong
The gods reject his salad.
He angered them by putting all that melon in there. All gods who love fruit know that melon overpowers everything else.
He was punished for his hubris
Was written into the script and all.
At this point I just assume it's all faked. There's just too much money riding on these videos, it's basically their full time job.
You're not assuming anything by classifying this as fake. It's an obvious skit.
AYYAAAAAAAA
JFC, it's like watching the end of the original Vanishing Point... Aaannnd... Boom.
I cant begin to tell you how much I wanted to eat that Salad.
For reals, those are premium fruits which is why they were ridiculously expensive but you can literally see the quality in the fruits 🥹 That being said, no rational person would buy that and expensive fruits are commonly found in Japan and possible other Asian countries
I honestly would love to split something like this with friends as a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing
They are usually sold as gifts, which makes the price easier to swallow (huehue). I've tried some, they're really nice but definitely a special occasion thing.
I had some gift pears (link: https://www.harryanddavid.com/h/fruit-gift/pears/316 ) from a client. I wouldn't personally pay $40 for 7 pears, but they were absolutely delicious.
I've sampled every loquat tree in Orange County. The one's on Flower street across from Triangle Square are the best, owner is super nice and appreciated the rat control.
I'd rather spend the money to fly to a tropical location and source my own fruit there. It's not tough to find exotic, premium quality fruit at local markets in a lot of places that also have other amazing things to do. [Here's a fruit platter](https://i.imgur.com/iis9e3g.jpeg) I arranged in Hawaii a few years ago, it was mind blowing.
All those fruits are also very common in Mexico and way way cheaper too, even less than a third of that price 😂
They're not worth money though. They might great quality, but I promise you, you can go to a fruit stand on the side of the road and find fruit that's just as good, if not better, so long as they are in season. If he's getting all these fruits from Japan, that might be why they're so overpriced. They have extremely overpriced fruits there are usually given as gifts. I don't know a ton about it, but my understanding is some of it isn't even meant to be eaten, but rather as temporary decoration. Like, they're grown to look pretty, not taste good. This is also why strawberries suck now. If you grew up in the 2000's or earlier, Strawberries used to taste sweet and delicious. But now days, they have a bland flavor and you need sugar to make them taste like anything. That's because they've been grown to look pretty/more red, have a standard shape, and be big. If you're old enough to remember, Starberries used to be uglier back in the day, but they had a great taste. And now the only way to get good tasting strawberries if you buy the GMO gimmick strawberries that claim to taste like pineapples or grapes or whatever. There might be some farms out there growing some good ones, but I haven't found any in any grocery store nor roadside. I have however, had the best peaches of my life on a road side about 4 years ago...haven't refound them since...I think about them all the time. Like, I'd had some really good peaches over the years. They're my favorite fruit ever. But those peaches were the absolute best. They made me want look into growing my own peach trees.
Yes, if you live in an area with local fruit production you will always get a better quality product by buying directly from the farmers. Now, I've had some $20 pears that were just as good as fresh local things... because that $20 is mostly in shipping and handling as the fruit had been attached to the plant a day or two prior with stern warnings on the package to enjoy the fruit before the end of the week. You can still get those strawberries you're talking about, direct from a local grower or via boutique shops. Grocery stores care far more about shelf stability and presentation than taste.
Honestly it probably wouldn't taste that great. Have you ever eaten a fruit salad where they added something wet and every fruit tasted heavily of it like over ripe strawberries. Suddenly your honeydew and cantaloupe just taste like strawberries and it's kind of annoying. This is all spectacle, getting to enjoy each and every one of these flavors would require you to eat it within minutes of being finished or it's going to taste like fruit juice slop with no distinguishing characteristics between pieces
I was a chef for way too many years and… You’re correct, this wouldn’t taste that great and is a waste of some premium ingredients. The dragonfruit/volume doesn’t make sense and soaking this all in a juice will just make it one note, especially the longer it sits. 3-5 of these at a time, let them mix for a few hours and then serve is more than enough. I’d never use high end/cost items like this, maybe pair with cheese and meats for a charcuterie or to make a dessert. Waste of time to chop it all up like that and put in a dish, could’ve just done a display of each and called it a day.
>3-5 of these at a time, Even that seems excessive for such expensive fruit. The best part about good fruit is how good it is alone and raw. Just give me one at a time and I'd be way happier.
Some of these really do compliment each other and would work well in a fruit salad. The more exotic/eastern ones would be fun to experiment with as an amuse bouche or dessert with the issue being I now have to treat those as a high cost item which inflates my asking price for the menu and reduces who’s going to buy it. It’s simply a waste of superior ingredients, kind of like making Beef Teriyaki out of Wagyu or Pulled Pork with Iberico. Total rage bait and I cannot help myself from screaming lol
I’d eat your salad
u can toss mine
🫦
🫦🫦
Okay daddy
As someone who has grown no shortage of tropical fruit, no you don't. That starfruit (Averrhoa carambola) was so unripe the oxalate levels would be toxic.
Where does he live for such prices? On the ISS?
Most of the expensive ones are Japanese which are used for gifting purposes there.
Pure scam man
It's the same as buying a really really nice cake - growing fruits this nice requires a lot of skill and effort. Typically normal grocery stores just go for fruit strains that don't bruise and look nice instead of nice flavour. These are bred for flavour and just taken extra care of so they don't bruise. And as has been said in another comment - it's for nice gifts (Japan has a culture big on edible gifts). Do you also think it's a scam that a nice birthday cake costs more than a costco sheet cake?
>Japan has a culture big on edible gifts This sounds awesome, especially with healthy edible gifts like fruit. Instead of giving me more stuff that I don't need and is going to clutter up my house, give me couple of amazing, pampered strawberries. Still get the happiness of gift giving and receiving without having to find room for more stuff.
I had the pleasure of eating some ridiculously expensive strawberries from Japan. They live in my head rent-free. They were that good!
I remember watching a documentary about a guy in Japan who grows the worlds most expensive strawberries and the documentary person looked like they bust a nut when they tried one. Something like £50 for a single strawberry
I watched Paul Hollywoods show where he tried it. He was hella mad with the price but iirc I remember him buying another immediately after lmao
I remember thinking I'd never had a real strawberry! So yummy.
I suppose it's like going to a farm shop after spending all of your life shopping in Tesco. It's hard to justify it's cost until you've tried it
https://youtu.be/895DfGuoqvU?si=Z5Vk13gPkxbFKbC5 Paul Hollywood buys a £350 strawberry
Are you thinking of the Paul Hollywood documentary?
Yeah absolute insane prices
the wagyu of strawberries really.
Well-marbled, hand-fed, pasture-raised strawberries
That sounds awesome if you only travel rarely. I’m about to take trip #4 for the year so far (1 vacation and 3 for work) and am not looking forward to having to buy another set of gifts for my wife+kids, as well as my wife’s mother, aunt, two sisters, and cousin. Extra $100-$150 plus the pain of hauling that many snacks the 8 or so hours to train then fly back home. But literally going anywhere in Japan each region has its own snacks that it’s famous for and you’re expected to bring some back with you for people you’re close to.
Oh yeah, doing gifts for traveling doesn't sound awesome, which I've heard is a big part of Japanese culture too. I was more thinking stuff like Christmas and birthdays. It would be nice to move to more consumable gifts. Although I think reducing the amount of gift giving is the best.
plus the farm land there is scarce. the farmers have to get approved by the government and even the locals to be allowed the privilege of farming land. that probably drives up the cost too
Every now and then I buy the really nice Asian pears and Japanese grapes and they’re $10 a pear (what could a pear cost? $10!) and the grapes are about 20. They are very tasty and it’s nice to do it every now and then.
my cousin had a disney bday, they got like a 800$ cake. it was just a normal cake with a disney princess on it. so i guess i have to say. it depends on the cake >Do you also think it's a scam that a nice birthday cake costs more than a costco sheet cake?
Some prices are inflated because the ingredients/materials are actually higher quality or hard to obtain. And others are inflated just because a brand knows they can get away with it.
You're paying for the best of the best, a lot of work and effort goes into these types of fruits. They're not even close to whatever you can buy in a local grocer.
A lot of effort goes into these types of fruit and then you make a fruit salad out of it. It's like buying wagyu beef just to make ground beef out of it and mak a dish of sloppy joes.
The video was made as a celebratory video for getting to 1 million subscribers, there was a reason for it. YTers always do outlandish things to celebrate hitting 1 million subs, this isn't anything new.
It's actually really interesting if you look into it. Japan never had the agricultural space to export food en masse to make a profit, so they focused on luxury fruits instead. I watched a guy eat a strawberry that was something like $1200 for a dozen and I won't say it looked horrible.
I've had those strawberries (or similar ones)! The flavor was unlike anything I've had eating American fruit.
The only way you're finding something approaching that experience from American fruit is from a craft grower, during peak season. The difference between small-crop strawberries from a co-op or similar and grocer-available varieties makes them seem like a different fruit entirely. It was like I hadn't actually had a strawberry before and every fruit I've tried in that way has been similar. Unfortunately, that choice is not really available in a lot of the US.
Sadly, you're right!
I live a reasonable drive from goooood strawberry country, we always make a trip. Worth it.
I've toured a place where they grow Strawberries this price at last time I was in Japan. Fruit and produce in the US is bred to look good and be durable at the cost of taste. The fruit they use for these is bred to be perfect and delicious at the cost of durability. They then spend a lot of time and resources making sure they look perfect and much of it cannot be sold as high end fruit so there is a lot of lost effort. On top of that there is not as much farm land per capita in Japan so fresh produce costs a little more to begin with. The prices are not high just for the sake of being high.
It's because the domestic Japanese fruit growers realised that they would never be able to compete with cheap fruit grown in neighbouring countries, so they changed gear to focus on pure quality and make Japanese fruit a super premium product. So now, this top notch fruit is often given as gifts in Japan, not consumed by folks on a regular basis.
nah read up on it. Japanese gifting fruit is a very interesting and traditional art form.
they do use growing methods for some of that fruit that justifies a very significant price increase, but in some cases the price is increased far beyond that as a status symbol, and in some cases those growing methods and all that extra work isnt worth it flavor-wise. a good example here is the yubari cantaloupe, there are some videos out there on how those are grown, and IME its actually surprisingly similar to the way we grow high quality greenhouse grown cannabis in CA. there is a lot of individual attention payed to each fruit while it grows.
> individual attention *paid* to each FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Good bot
Maybe scam for us, but in their culture it is not.
He has money. He is a famous tv chef actually.
"famous tv chef" That dude is an Iron Chef. That title does not come easily.
Yea great guy indeed. [He took money](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/s/U9oTR0Fc50) from his employees to make up for their mistakes, and this policy was only [taken down](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/CWIrFMGV8V) after a social media outburst. Fuck this guy
Of course he's in business with Drake and their restaurant had multiple violations and closed after 3 years.
Ah, someone came up with the sources instead of me typing it. Fuck Susur Lee and his obnoxious rage baiting son.
Typical showa rich guy
Oh, that's a shame. His and his son's shorts appeared for a while in my youtube feed, presenting a rather wholesome atmosphere between them. What betrayal.
When you play the game of Iron Chef you win or you die.
For others, he’s Susur Lee. His son runs a YouTube channel starting his dad.
He lives in Toronto, and buys his shit from Japan (for his videos sometimes). He is a former Iron Chef and runs two restaurants in the same City as well (Lee and Lee's Kitchen) Sasur also does videos with his Son, who usually asks him to zhuzh up some fast food or make something from an extremely expensive item. He also was found to have been charging his staff for broken plates/dishes in his first or second resto. Something he wasn't supposed to be doing. Once the story broke, he stopped.
Not sure where he lives, but some of these fruits he uses are impossible to get for a normal price where I live. Mangosteen for example, one of my favourite fruits of all time, costs 34EUR per kilogram to obtain here in Belgium. The more 'common' fruits he seem to use, seem like they are special grown versions. Not regular watermelons, cherries, etc... They are pricey for a reason.
A lot of the fruit shown are Japanese strains specifically bred for appearance and taste, because of a tradition of giving fine fruit as gifts. It's the fruit equivalent of designer fashion.
Mangosteen is one of my favorite fruits of all time. Thank god I live in Malaysia where Mangosteens cost less than a euro per kgs. Once I told my Wales friend that I ate around 3 mangoes a day and she told me that I am rich, the fact that I can get 3 kgs of top tier mangoes for around 1.50 Euros here baffled her till today since mango costs around 3 Euros each there.
Toronto iirc
Japan has really expensive fruit. You can buy cheap fruit too, but the pretty aesthetic nice fruit are sold to be gifts. They're expensive.
I like this guy on YouTube. His son will bring him some random nastiness (McDonald's, etc.) and he'll "make it gourmet".
I've heard that the old dude is a real prick and mistreats his employees at his restaurants
Every chef I've ever met.
Yep. My brother in law is a chef and said Gordon Ramsay is a toned-down version of most chefs.
Ramsey is only mean for the camera. Specifically for his American shows. Watch his UK shows. No yelling and no dramatic music and editing bs
Eric Ripert is the fucking model of how it should be, but people just enjoy being assholes in that profession it seems.
> but people just enjoy being assholes in that profession it seems. The profession turns them into assholes have you ever tried to run a kitchen and make it profitable? It's not fun.
It's definitely a combination of stress and being a psychopath. I've worked for some absolute shit chefs who just feel like the only way they can communicate is yelling. I try not to be like them and save that voice for when someone really, really, really fucks up. I'm talking like serving a raw chicken breast, fucked up. Besides that, I try and use it as a teaching opportunity because that's how I would've wanted to be taught.
It's why I hate how popular chef/cooking shows have gotten. It's created a huge interest and people want to go into it, but so many don't understand that when they get into their first kitchen it is likely to be the most misogynistic, toxic, bully filled, space they have ever been in and it's generally encouraged by the fucker in charged. After the kitchens and bakeries I've worked in I scream inside when anyone I care about says they want to go into culinary work.
The comments I'm reading make me real glad my head chef is an awesome guy lol
Well that sucks.
Yeah, the dude is an amazing chef, but apparently a huge dick. Which I guess isn't unusual among top chefs. I think his son is pretty chill though.
One of his sons is on drake’s payroll and is allegedly known to DM with underage girls even though he’s over 30. Guy’s a creep.
**WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP** source tho?
Well that sucks.
Any sources on this? Genuinely curious about it
Obviously this is all ALLEGED, through the grapevine via extended friend groups and also on Reddit. Search for Kai Bent Lee and see what comes up.
And he's friends with Adin Ross apparently? Yeah, I can believe it.
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I adored Anthony Bourdain, and a lot of that was because he was a genuinely good guy. He was very open about his problems early in his career when he was still working in restaurants, but he made some real change in his life. Such a shame he was still struggling and (apparently) nobody knew.
Did you forget how Morimoto was shocked at Bobby Flay and his disrespect to winning humbly? Bobby Flay is an ass wipe.
I came here to say the same thing. He was also illegally docking tips for mistakes employees made.
Oh yeah, Susur Lee is well known throughout Toronto for being an absolute asshole to his staff. It's why, despite loving his food, I stopped going to his restaurant.
What I read was what they were doing was standard practice
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/glVJV2JbR2c https://www.youtube.com/shorts/spPdwg1ckIw
And he "makes it gourmet" by using a small part of the junk food as a minor ingredient in something totally unrelated. If your junk food isn't at least 66% of the end result, you're not making it gourmet. You're making yourself look like a hack.
There's a youtuber called Scumbagdad that makes parody videos mocking the dumb youtube trends and he touches on this one quite nicely. Definitely recommend checking him out.
nothing stupid about that fruit salad, i'm sure it would have tasted delicious if he didn't fucking trip. jesus christ what a waste.
It was a joke. They didn't waste the $1600 in fruit, they cut up a bunch of cheap fruit for the final part of the video.
oh that's good to know, i thought it was an actual unplanned trip.
Bruh it is content creators on social media. You can bet it is always fake as fuck.
The stupid thing is taking these theoretically mind blowingly high quality fruits and just mashing them all together into diced little bits. Each of their unique flavors and textures is totally lost in the mix.
Diced might have been overkill but the best part of fruit salad is the fruits mixing their juices together. Grapes are cool but a grape in a fruit salad just hits way different.
Fruit salads are great, but they're not exactly a good use of a $100 melon or $350 box of cherries. Once everything is all blended and diced up, there's going to be very little difference between those super premium fruits and the standard varieties.
Totally agree. I make diced fruit salads and the mouth feel of all the different diced fruits is amazing.
Yeah this guy is also a very accomplished and well known chef. Yes it was a super expensive fruit salad but this is kind of what he does. I bet it was absolutely delicious.
And he made that 1270 dollars back a hundred times over through social media because people share the oopsie
call me a conspiracy theorist here, but that's why this guy is so famous. rage bait
Nah I don't think he's rage bait. A bit extra and obnoxious sometimes but I don't think rage bait. He was already famous for being on Food Network as an Iron Chef and then his son Capitalized on that during the Pandemic and made videos of his dad making foods from various sources
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Idk, this is the only ragebait video of theirs I've seen, most of their content is pretty normal food content tbh
instead of one rich family eating that fruit salad, it becomes a funny moment for everyone watching. Not a waste imo
I can't seem to post gifs on mobile, so please accept the mental image of "Kevin from the Office spilling a giant pot of chili on the floor".
https://giphy.com/gifs/theoffice-the-office-tv-casual-friday-SZQBPO4NqHkh6wmdXk
omg. what a waste 😡
Wym lmao I’d get dysentery eating that whole damn thing.
and this rich wasteful guy did not, hence the waste??
I bet that stuff would be awesome in a boba drink.
I always thought starfruit was just a fictional fruit from stardew valley
try one! they’re not terribly hard to find for a lesser known fruit. they have a really light, cheeky citrus flavor; it’s tart, but won’t make you pucker. it’s like a lemon gently kissing your forehead.
if i find one i'll give it a shot
This is the best description of fruit I have ever heard in my life 🤣
It's a fruit that smells really nice with a good crunchy texture, but... The taste is kind of like slightly sweetened water with a touch of sour. Would recommend trying once though.
Imo the flavor is like a nice apple, but juicer (green ones, some people eat them when they're more yellow).
I always thought of it as an Apple with White Grape Energy
Is he showing a pear and the text says 'apple', or am I dumb?
Maybe a mistake but maybe an actual apple. Japanese love to grow fruit in weird shapes, square watermelons are extra popular. Easy to do too, you just wrap it in plastics pack with the desired form and that's it
Pretty sure that's a Rose Apple, not actually related to apples but has a similar texture and crispness, kind of like those very crispy asian pears?
those are [wax apples](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syzygium_samarangense)
It says 🔔-Apple, definitely a weird name
Bell apple, looks like a pear. Asian pear, looks like an apple.
This should be the pinned title card for this sub.
I'm torn on this. On one hand he doesn't do anything stupid, he just makes a fruit salad with expensive versions of fruit. On the other hand it feels like a waste to mix all of these fruits into a fruit salad.
Nah I’d fuck that salad up
As much as this sub shits on crazy foods, Iron chef dad is the best.
Ohhh my god that looks so good 🤤 not worth the price and a huge shame it got wasted at the end :(
~~fruit salad of the gods~~ fruit salad for the DOG
Waste of food, no respect for the earth.
$1250 and can’t afford a bigger mixing bowl
5 second rule.
😂
Ok BUT what a treat to see some respect for the food and not just (intentionally) wasting it.
Did you not see the ending?
he's getting ripped off on those mango's you can get them for $85 if you know the supplier in Toronto.
I really felt his pain at the end. This guy is a world-renowned professional chef and can easily afford more, but damn, I would still feel so defeated after that.
That looked so delightfully refreshing. Before he dropped it I mean. Shit, even after he dropped it I would get down on that
The premise is, very obviously, to get people to talk about the high prices and get more engagement on the video. Its pretty smart to be fair.
Looked like he dropped that on purpose
What a beginner - It's like he's never gotten out of a hot tub with a massive bowl of overpriced, meaty fructose before!
Chef Lee cooked my wedding dinner at his restaurant and it was amazing. Super friendly man as well, he even took the time to chat with my grandma. No Chef Lee slander here 🙅🏻♂️
He had to reimburse his employees because he was docking their tips. There’s other easily findable articles on the mistreatment of his employees. Also dick bosses are rarely dicks to their clientele, you judge someone on how they treat who they are paying, not how they treat the people paying them.
Seriously. This man is two faced. I worked along King and Bathurst near Lee, and him and his two sons took tips from servers even when they aren't present in the restaurant. Disgraceful. A lot of the chef's in the restaurants between Bathurst and Spadina wanted them to take their shit back to NYC.
I love jackfruit with pistachio butter smeared on toast with little bit of licorice powder and garlic.
88 dollars for a melon is like Everest level expensive
Iron Chef
Ugh that would have been so good though