As the International Festival's feature event, Chef Masaharu Morimoto displayed his famed cooking skills Friday in front of a sold-out audience in McConomy Auditorium.

Many students arrived well before the demonstration was to begin at 7:30 — one was waiting in line as early as 4:30 — and McConomy was almost completely full by 7:20. After a brief introduction by Emily Half, coordinator of the International Festival, Morimoto took the stage with his assistant Makoto Okawa. The audience ooh-ed and ahh-ed as Morimoto and Okawa showed each of the many types of meat and vegetables they would use during the performance.

"I'm thinking what to do next," Morimoto said while pausing over his cutting board.

Morimoto obtained his cult fame as Iron Chef Japanese on the Japanese television show Iron Chef. Although the performance was not done in the style of the show, on which the main ingredients are a surprise to the competing chefs, Morimoto still improvised his multi-course meal.

"It's just when I'm in a tight spot, [a new dish idea] just sort of happens," he said.

Whether wordlessly slicing ingredients or cracking jokes about American celebrity chef Bobby Flay, Morimoto delighted his audience during his performance.

"When I hold a knife, I am not a good speaker," Morimoto explained, often using a translator to talk with the audience while he prepared his food.

Even Morimoto's three specialty knives were of interest to the audience; as he said during his performance, each cost $5,000. These cutleries were made from forged steel and under the same standards as traditional samurai swords.The audience watched silently as he demonstrated his knife skills.

"Please ask a question," Morimoto implored the audience after a period of silence in McConomy. "Otherwise I'll sing."

"Sing! Sing!" shouted the audience in unison.

"No one seems to understand a joke these days," Morimoto replied as the audience continued to laugh.

Many attendees took advantage of Morimoto's willingness to answer questions, both serious and comical.

"Did you enjoy your dinner tonight?" asked HSS junior Theresa Sobczak.

"What? With you?" Morimoto replied lightheartedly, as cmuTV cameraman Greg Battaglia zoomed in on Sobczak and her date.

He also displayed his humble side when an audience member asked if he had ever cooked anything particularly bad on Iron Chef.

"One of the judges told me [the dish] was not for human consumption," said Morimoto about Battle Asparagus. 

Morimoto's sense of humor is not shown on the television program. He instead attracted the attention of the Iron Chef producers because of his excellent work as executive chef of New York City's acclaimed Nobu restaurant.

"I was asked, and I did it," said Morimoto of becoming an Iron Chef. "When I got tired, I came [back] to the US."

Now that he is no longer working as an Iron Chef, Morimoto opened a restaurant in Philadelphia two years ago that bears his name. He plans to open another restaurant in the Meat Packing District of New York City sometime in the next year.

Despite all of these lofty accomplishments, Morimoto was extremely down-to-earth and personable. Instead of becoming annoyed when a cell phone went off during his performance, he teased the anonymous audience member by smiling and asking, "Who's that?" When asked the ethnicity of his wife, he chided the questioner by saying, "She's from Earth."

Morimoto also offered pieces of cooking advice as he prepared particular foods, including the facts that mushrooms should be cleaned by dry brushing — not water-washing — to avoid stripping it of its flavor and that high-quality meat should not be cooked for too long.

Among the more memorable culinary moments of his performance were the speed with which Morimoto created a beautiful array of sushi and, most notably, his somewhat violent preparation of a lobster dish.

"It's still moving!" cried HSS sophomore Karl Sjogren as Morimoto yanked off a live lobster's claws before slicing it in half and throwing it into a frying pan.

"It's supposed to be dead; don't worry," Morimoto joked in response to some audience members' audible discomfort. Although the preparation was brutal, the resulting dish was as stunning and tempting as the others Morimoto made.

"Do you take Visa?" one audience member asked after Morimoto said that he would be auctioning off his food at the end of the performance.

Luckily for attendees, all of the food was simply up for grabs after Morimoto was finished. In a mob rush to the stage, audience members ate whatever they could get their hands on.  One parent even stashed a slice of meat in her purse.

Morimoto can be seen as Iron Chef Japanese on re-runs of Iron Chef, which airs on the Food Network every day at 11 pm and 3 am.