"battle". Iron Chefs From the beginning of the show in 1993, the three Iron Chefs were: Iron Chef Japanese Rokusaburo Michiba, Iron Chef Chinese Chen Kenichi, and Iron Chef French Yutaka Ishinabe. After the first season, Ishinabe decided to step down and become an 'honorary Iron Chef', thus passing the mantle of Iron Chef French to Hiroyuki Sakai in 1994. Ishinabe returned for two more battles during season three. At the beginning of season four in 1996, Michiba announced his retirement and debuted Koumei Nakamura as the new Iron Chef Japanese. Michiba returned on rare occasions for special Kitchen Stadium battles. In 1997, Chairman Kaga announced a new, additional Iron Chef to the group: Iron Chef Italian Masahiko Kobe. He was the youngest of the Iron Chefs and battled sparingly throughout the rest of the show, ascending to the stage separately from the three main Iron Chefs, and surrounded by a chamber string ensemble. In 1998, Nakamura also decided to retire and passed the title of Iron Chef Japanese to Masaharu Morimoto. Iron Chef statistics Show staff Kenji Fukui, Announcer/Commentator (English voice: Bill Bickard) Yukio Hattori, Commentator (English voice: Scott Morris) Takeshi Kaga (as Chairman Kaga), Host (English voice: Duncan Hamilton, Kent Frick) Shinichiro Ohta, Kitchen Reporter (English voice: Jeff Manning) Kyoichi Tanaka, Director Masahiro Ito, Screenwriter Kundō Koyama, Screenwriter Setsuko Yuuki, Food Coordinator Dave Spector served as translator and commentator for "New York Special". Original format Originally, challengers vied with each other in preliminary "battles" to earn the right to face an Iron Chef in a 90-minute competition, and should a challenger win twice against Iron Chefs, the challenger would be given the title of "Honorary Iron Chef". However, this format proved unpopular, the preliminary round was scrapped and the main contest was reduced to the now familiar 60 minutes. The awarding of honorary Iron Chef titles to challengers was also discontinued (although this was largely a moot point as few challengers ever defeated two Iron Chefs in separate contests), but was given as an emeritus title for a retiring Iron Chef. Once honorary titles were no longer issued, challengers who beat an Iron Chef had to settle for, according to the English version's introduction, "the people's ovation and fame forever". In each episode, chefs have one hour to cook and improvise a multicourse meal around a theme ingredient that must be present in each dish. Before the actual