Japan’s famous Chinese cuisine chef Chen Kenichi died at a Tokyo hospital on March 11 due to interstitial pneumonia. He was 67.
Chen is best known for his role as the “Iron Chef Chinese” on the television series Iron Chef, a popular Japanese cooking show produced by Fuji TV. He was the longest-serving Iron Chef and the only original Iron Chef in Japan.
He was born in 1956 in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Chinese father of Japanese nationality.
His father, Chen Kenmin, is a prominent chef who introduced and popularized Sichuan (also spelled Szechwan) cuisine—a well-known type of Chinese cuisine—in Japan. He is regarded as the father of Sichuan cuisine in Japan….