Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

Left to right, Chefs Anoosh Shariat, Peng Looi, Jeff Jarfi and Nathan Carlson posed for this Iron Chef Louisville poster.

Anoosh Shariat is Iron Chef Louisville, as the executive chef of Park Place and Browning's narrowly edged out Peng Looi of Asiatique and August Moon and Nathan Carlson of Avalon in the first round of local competition inspired by the popular FoodTV program.

The secret ingredient was ... coffee!

Shariat won $1,000 and the right to compete for the final prize in November against the winners of Iron Chef competitions to come on July 11 and in September, all in the Bomhard Theater in the Kentucky Center for the arts.

Here's my report on the evening's deliberations, presented direct from my scribbled notes in stream-of-consciousness format, since my duties as a judge made it difficult to stay in full reportorial mode.

The Bomhard's "Kitchen Arena." Thanks to Marsha from Jarfi's Bistro for the photos.

The producers did a very good job of turning the Bomhard into a small Iron Chef-style Kitchen Stadium, with three separate work stations for the three contestants, each station outfitted with burners and a huge metal exhaust hood overhead. Behind each station was a prep area, and behind that, big tables laden with impressive goodies: Remarkably fresh seafood including lots of whole fish from Bluefin. Beautiful produce, laid out like a work of art, from Creation Gardens. Meats from Buckhead Beef and Malcolm Meats, and other contributions. (For a full list of event sponsors and purveyors, see below.)

Stage left, on a platform, a table with three chairs and three place settings for the judges. Nice tablecloth and napkins, good flatware, and plenty of it ... five knives, five forks, a soup spoon and a tiny seafood-pickin' fork.

A load of produce from Creation Gardens, ready for the chefs.

Each of the competing chefs - Anoosh Shariat of Park Place and Browning's, Peng Looi of Asiatique and August Moon and Nathan Carlson of Avalon - had set up in advance and brought in various items that they expected to use.

For Shariat, it was spices - rare and exotic spices like hickory-smoked sea salt and a tiny can of fennel pollen: yes, pollen - I am not kidding about this - pollen that smelled like aromatic fennel perfume and costs $100 an ounce, according to Jerry Slater, Shariat's wine guy and host. He also had some decidedly ordinary wines - a modest Italian Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and a Washington State white. He'd also brought a pint of Woodford Reserve and a bottle of Rainwater Madeira.

Peng Looi had sauces ready to go - red and fiery sambal, passionfruit puree and, in a startlingly coincidental hit on the evening's yet-to-be-unveiled secret ingredient, an espresso-Cabernet reduction, as well as a pharmacopeia of Asian spices. Carlson, stage right, had flavored oils in a dazzling variety of flavors and colors.

The Chairman: Jeff Jarfi

Jeff Jarfi, proprietor of Jarfi's Bistro in the Kentucky Center and the guy who came up with the idea of Iron Chef Louisville and made it happen, served as the emcee, color commentator and floor reporter all in one, as if FoodTV's Chairman Kaga, Dr. Hattori and Shinichiro Ohta were all rolled into a single paripatetic player. Jarfi opened the show right on time at 6 p.m., introduced the judges, Fox News Anchor Barry Bernson, CJ Food Editor Sarah Fritschner, and your humble scribe, and told the audience of 400 about the event: The winner would get $1,000, there'd be two more contests on June 11 and sometime in September, and the winners of these three sessions would meet for the finals in November. The proceeds were going to benefit the Kentucky Center.

Then the chefs came on. There were no bright Iron Chef togs for these guys, just their regular white chef's jackets. Each introduced his team of three sous chefs ... and it was time for the Secret Ingredient!

In lieu of the traditional cloud of dry-ice smoke, the Louisville Iron Chef Secret Ingredient was rolled out amid flashing lights, escorted by a uniformed police officer from the St. Matthews PD. Jarfi whipped off the white tablecloth to reveal the ingredient ... coffee! Big, burlap bags of coffee, provided by Consumer's Choice.

Company executive David Lange later said the cart was loaded with coffees in various forms to inspire the chefs' creativity: Espresso beans, ground espresso, instant espresso, a pot of brewed espresso; and beans, ground and brewed regular coffee. Enough coffee to keep the entire audience of 400 up all night, if everyone could have a taste of it.

Cooking action is under way. That's the Avalon table in the foreground, then Looi's, with Shariat's kitchen in the back.

With no joyous shout of "Allez cuisiner," just a soft word from Jarfi, the battle was underway.

It looked very much like the original Japanese Iron Chef, as all three teams hurried to the larders, made their selections, and started prep work. It was impressive to see how smoothly each group of chefs worked together in tight quarters, almost a kitchen ballet, with Jarfi and video and still photographers darting around them, crouching and squatting for artsy angle shots and closeups. The video, meanwhile, was shown live on two oversize projection screens above the stage so the audience could watch closeups of the cooking action.

The chefs would have one hour to cook, but unlike the system on the televised Iron Chef, where all judging is done after the hour, here the chefs brought each dish to the judges as soon as it was finished. This worked out surprisingly well, with little overlapping or dishes piling up - it was almost as if they watched each other and took turns presenting.

It was a great treat being a judge. All three of these chefs rank among the city's best, and they all had on their game faces and came to play, so we would have a rare opportunity to sample some remarkable dishes.

Each chef had a distinct style at his station: Peng Looi stood in place, seeming almost serene as he reached out for tools and ingredients like a surgeon at work, with nurses ready to slap a scalpel - or a cleaver - into his waiting hand. Carlson danced a more sedate waltz and seemed relaxed. Shariat was all energy, moving around at a fast but not jerky pace, zipping quickly from his cooking station to the prep tables to the larder and back, always on the move.

Each chef was to present three dishes for scoring, all having coffee as an ingredient; each dish could earn a total of 20 points: 10 for flavor, 5 for presentation and 5 for creativity. Chefs could prepare additional dishes, but only the first three would be scored.

The dishes flew by; I tasted and scribbled notes:

Anoosh Shariat

Anoosh Shariat was on top of his form. He's known for mastery of flavor combinations, and it showed. Just about all of his dishes were creative inspirations, right on, with flavors in perfect synchronicity and balance. One dish, a selection of perfectly poached lobster tail and claw meat in a "soup" of coffee-scented lobster broth and cardamom cream, was an inventive triumph, a dish so good that the judges longed to upend our bowls so as to claim every last drop. Another dish, thin-sliced crisp fennel layered with thin slices of coffee-crusted pink albacore tuna seared sushi-rare and sweet fresh pineapple rings, dusted with that pricey fennel pollen, was more controversial with the judges; Fritschner thought it overly "fruity," but I judged it right on. His third dish was right up there with the rest, a block of beef tenderloin coated with coffee, seared on the exterior and blood-rare within, plated on a coffee sauce and a Bourbon sauce that worked beautifully together and that didn't just kick the tender but simple meat up a notch but slapped it up one. An accompanying oyster mushroom coated with panko and crushed nori seaweed and deep-fried was interesting but a little greasy, ending up, as fried food so often does, mostly as a vehicle for the breading. Finally, a fourth, unscored dessert course kept up the same pace - a trio of sweet treats including starfruit lavished with a coffee sabayon and a coffee-bourbon "shooter" in a tall glass and ... at this point I lose track. Under pressure and in a game situation, Shariat demonstrated why he ranks among the city's top chefs.

Somehow Peng Looi escaped Marsha's camera lens, but here's one of his artful dishes: Beef on a ball of coconut rice at the top, lamb and foie gras at the bottom, plated with a golden swash of passionfruit puree, a red dab of sambal and a dark-brown stripe of Cabernet-espresso reduction.

Peng Looi, also one of the best chefs in Louisville by any measure, produced just the kind of dishes you would expect from him ... perfect little works of food-as-art, creative, thoughtful and beautifully displayed. Like a runner who over-trains, though, he sometimes seemed to be trying too hard, and this cost him. One dish featured three separate bite-size items. One of them was brilliant: a bite-size creation of squid stuffed with shrimp and crab, served cold and topped with a tiny dab of habanero sorbet, light as air, a dab of tangy ice-mist that disappeared in your mouth only to leave behind a knife cut of searing heat. But it shared the plate with a much less interesting item, a square of thin-sliced sole coated with paprika and crushed pistachios on a ginger-lime espresso reduction, that came to the judges barely warm and just didn't work out. The squid alone would have earned a perfect score; the less successful sole knocked down his average. His first course had similar issues ... a tiny clam served in a pool of ginger broth on a Chinese restaurant spoon was ethereal, but fiery sambal sauce overwhelmed a bite of lobster, and a single scallop, cooked perfectly medium-rare, lost points for a harsh, bitter coating of ground coffee and fiery garam masala. His third dish, also two items on one artful plate, featured a bite of rare beef in a "vertical" preparation atop a ball of coconut rice with a dab of fiery red sambal on the side; and a slice of tender, pale-pink lamb (at first I thought it was duck) topped with a dab of silken foie gras and plated on chopped oyster mushrooms and a dab of the aforementioned cabernet-espresso reduction. The wine-coffee sauce, although delicious in its own right, was almost too bold for the delicate flavors of the lamb and foie gras. Looi's fourth dish might have been his best, but it didn't count in the scoring: Two offbeat "sushi rolls," one of beef and portobello mushroom rolled around what appeared to be lemongrass and served on a lace-like potato pancake; the other a dense roll of barely wilted baby spinach with a flavor accent that seemed to focus on Thai nam pla or similar Southeast Asian fish sauce, plated on a sweet-tangy schmear of tamarind-Port-espresso reduction.

Nathan Carlson

Nathan Carlson got off to a rolling start with a bite of citrus-scented albacore tuna tartare in a witty presentation, served on a "spoon" made of flaky puff pastry. But the younger chef from Avalon was pitted against two of Louisville's best chefs, and while he gave a good account of himself and looks to have a strong future on the city's dining scene, he was the longshot horse in this race. His second course, like some of Looi's dishes, featured two disparate items where one might have been the better choice: A witty "diner-style" dish of French toast triangles sandwiched with earthy duck confit and tangy goat cheese was a delight, but a pale-green soup of coffee and asparagus puree, served in an espresso cup with green onion garnish, left an odd taste in the judges' mouths. His third dish also showed signs that the chef's reach, though admirable, was exceeding his grasp. A large ravioli had been rolled out too thick and cooked too quickly, yielding doughy, chewy pasta. The dish looked spectacular, with the ravioli topped with lobster and lots of thin-sliced rounds of black truffle, but somehow the flavors seemed to cancel each other out, leaving a dish that looked great but tasted uninspiring. A fourth course, a dessert, featured juicy, fresh strawberries and a nicely done, airy coffee sabayon.

When it was all over, all three judges independently reached a similar conclusion on points: Anoosh Shariat wore the Iron Chef's crown, narrowly edging out Peng Looi, with a slightly longer margin over a still-strong showing by Nathan Carlson.

The chefs posed for pictures, the audience headed out to the arts center lobby for a sit-down dinner prepared by Jarfi's staff. And the judges, well-stuffed and hyper-caffeinated, headed home. Or at least this one did.

Iron Chef Louisville is sponsored by Jarfi's Bistro, The Kentucky Center, Consumer's Choice Coffee and Woodford Reserve. Trend Companies provides kitchen facilities for Iron Chef Louisville, and food items were contributed by Bluefin Seafood, Buckhead Beef/Malcolm Meats, Creation Gardens, Foodsales Inc., I & H Marketing and Sysco Louisville Food Service Co. A portion of the proceeds from the events will benefit The Kentucky Center.

For information on future events, watch this space. For information and tickets to all Kentucky Center events, visit the Kentucky Center Box Office, call (502) 584-7777 or 1-800-775-7777, TTY (502) 562-0730, or visit the Center's Website, www.kentuckycenter.org.