Morimoto is nearly perfect

So in a recent episode of Iron Chef America, Chef Masaharu Morimoto came as close to perfection as you can scoring a 59 out of 60 possible points in battle Kampachi. I've only had Kampachi (or sometimes you'll see it as Kanpachi) as Sushi / Sashimi. I believe some people call it a "young yellowtail" but I think it's actually related to amberjack. One dish in particular that stood out was Morimoto's beautiful array of suaces with Kampachi tar tar in a beautiful presentation, the judges seemed semi-orgasmic after consuming this dish.

As an avid fan of the series, I have 3 favorites among the 5 recurring iron chefs for different reasons. What I most want to eat is the food of Mario Batali, the chef that is stylistically most similar to me is Michael Symon, and the chef who makes things that are totally amazing and foreign to me is Morimoto. To me Bobby Flay and Cat Cora are second tier, not criticizing, I really respect their cooking but there's definitely a step change in the talent between these two and my favorites, that's my opinion at least. A tale of the tape on all these chefs' performances on Iron Chef America demonstrates I might be all wet in my subjective assessment ...

Iron Chef	Specialty	Wins[2]	Loss	Ties	Total
Mario Batali	Italian	19	4	0	23
Bobby Flay	Southwestern	16	7	2	25
Cat Cora	Greek & Aegean	11	5	0	16
Masaharu Morimoto	Japanese	16	7	1	24
Michael Symon[3]	Mediterranean	2	0	0	2

That translates to the following winning percentages (using a hockey-like scoring system, 2 for a win, 1 for tie, 0 for a loss, with 2 points possible)...

Mario Batali 82.6%
Masaharu Morimoto 68.8%
Bobby Flay 68.0%
Cat Cora 64.7%
Michael Symon 100% (but only two battles so far, let's see how he's doing after 10)

Looking at this data, the step change is between the crowd and Batali, clearly one of the best chefs in America. A little while back I was lucky to see one the "Iron Chef - Battle of the Masters" episodes between Wolfgang Puck and Morimoto. I have a warm spot in my heart for Puck, his provencial roots in cooking and his unreal knife skills are probably the reason ... I remember watching him on "Cooking Class with Wolfgang Puck" and he routinely would be chopping a julienne of something while looking at the camera, crazy. Anyway, Morimoto was really impressive, but just had no chance against Puck who assembled one of the most incredible meals I can imagine in Battle Egg. I'd put Puck and Batali on the same tier professionally at this point, with Morimoto close behind. I think Symon might be in that top tier too some day.