Beluga Caviar Confront
( page 2 )
created 01/17/01
Strangely, Nakamura gathers several trays of champagne glasses!
Nakamura hasn't done much in this match.. he fried some eggplants, fried bread, fried bananas, and roasted octopus, and smoked some ayu.. that's about it... but now we're immensely curious.  What is he doing with all those champagne glasses?
The ayu is done smoking.. 
This appears to be the most wasteful thing Nakamura can do.  Throughout the match, it's rather clear that Nakamura has no idea how to use the caviar.  He proceeds to scoupe and then dump the entire can of caviar into a glass bowl with several minutes remaining.
Unge's ice cream maker concoction turned out to be a sherbert.
Unges prepares 4 dishes:

Top: Caviar scattered couscouse and langostine tempuara
Left:  Salmon Caviar Millefeuille
Middle:  Caviar topped Bloody Mary Sherbert
Right:  Caiflower Pottage with Caviar float
The Salmon Caviar Millefeuille is gorgeous!  Such presentation.  Guest judge, Saito Keiko melted at first taste.
Nakamura presented his single dish called, Caviar Paradise.  This dish was unique as it consisted of 5 servings, and several items for each servering.

1st serving: Wings of Homeland
- Bean curd and Hot Spring Egg Yolk
- Warabi tofu soup and soaked bread

2nd servering:  Ocean delicacies
- Tuna and Octopus
- Kisu Sillago and Sweetfish

3rd servering:  Plateau delicacies
- Maitsutake mushroom and Nagaimo Yam
- Ginko nut and Kamo eggplant

4th serving:  Seafood delicacies
- Lobster and Abalone
- Eel and Scallop

5th serving:  Fruit fair
- Papaya and watermelon
- Melon and banana

In my eyes, Nakamura had pretty much made Japanese food as he usually does and just dumped caviar into each item.
As you can see, Nakamura wasn't very inventive.  Each dish was a textbook Japanese dish with caviar dumped on top.  Each dish was served in the exact same maner.

The judges complained that there was not enough variety.  They complained that each dish was served in the same exact style as the previous one.  Kaga questioned if there was a culinary reason to present all the dishes in this manner.  Saito Keiko said the eating process was long and boring.  Despite all the bad praise, Saito Keiko said that Nakamura carefully calculated the amount of caviar used to top each dish.  

Male guest judge, Kataoka Tsurutaro said that Nakamura's his smoked sweetfish was "an exquisite display of the skill of the Japanese cuisine."   It may have been an exquisite piece of fish, but no mention of how he used caviar.
Nakamura won... boooooooo!!! booooo!!!!

Unges recieved very high praise on all his dishes except for one bad comment from Kishi Asako.  Nakamura received countless bad remarks and yet somehow won.  IMHO, Nakamura made little effort to use caviar in inventive ways, nor did he prepare any inventive dishes.

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