Morimoto Napa. Unjust desserts behind the Iron Curtain.

I was recently introduced to “Iron Chef, Yankee Version” by she who never says “dinner’s ready”, but barks “I’m plating”.

When I watched the show, I wondered if my mind had been surreptitiously altered by science. For there stood a strange presenter, who seemed to possess an even stranger makeup artist.

He didn’t stand for long. He was soon performing scenes from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Which immediately made me wonder whether bits of cloth, sweat and foundation would be unfortunately sprinkled onto the secret ingredient.

Or whether, in fact, bits of cloth, sweat and foundation were the secret ingredient.

I had seen this man once before– on “Dancing with the Stars”, in which he was really not terribly good.

As for the so-called Iron Chefs who were standing like portly versions of statues at the Roman Forum, I recognized Bobby Flay and Mario Batali.

The short lady, whose name turned out to be Cat Cora, used to work, I subsequently discovered, at Bistro Don Giovanni in Napa. Which is nice enough for a tipsy lunch.

The large Japanese gentleman, however, I might have seen playing the sidekick to a James Bond villain. If he had played the sidekick to a James Bond villain, that is.

Rather beautiful, no?

Masaharu Morimoto seems to have appeared on the original Japanese version of “Iron Chef”, which was presented by the uncle of the strange crouching, leaping presenter from “Iron Chef, Yankee Version”.

Morimoto strikes me as the sort of man who, at school, would have happily swallowed a live komodo dragon just for the fun of it.

He has the smiling eyes and the deadly mouth of a Mafia don and his ponytail suggests he has, at times, struggled with his inner Joaquin Cortez.

Still, he seems to win quite a lot on “Iron Chef, Yankee Version”, and I am certain that he pretends not to be able to speak English, as he secretly curses some of the more ignorant judges in his own tongue.

I understand Morimoto already has a restaurant in, among other places, Philadelphia, which can only mean that there might, within, reside a penchant for sado-masochism.

Which might explain why he had opened a restaurant in Napa. The minute I heard– or perhaps several weeks later– I persuaded the Cordon Bleuhard, my companion in brine, to join me in experiencing Iron Cuisine.

Morimoto Napa, situated in a riverside part of Napa in which old bricks seems not to be allowed, has only just opened. So we thought we’d waft in at an early time in the hope of perching at the sushi bar.

Don't be fooled into thinking sushi is the thing here.

There is something quite soothing about watching the chefs ply their seaweed.

They cannot spit. They cannot drip snot. Though they can still curse in a foreign language.

For no obvious reason, I imagined that Morimoto Napa would be an intimate place. Instead, it was as if Kitchen Stadium, the pervertedly odd studio setup in which “Iron Chef, Yankee Version” is filmed, had been rewarded with a tasteful designer and a budget exceeding $20.

They fool you when you walk in. A few tables are sprinkled by the host stand and you imagine that intimacy will be possible here. But as we were walked towards the sushi bar, it felt like a walk down the tunnel at Cowboy Stadium.

The noise came down the corridor to greet us with a large hug around the ears.

Our seats, at the left end of the sushi bar, were wonderfully comfortable and the bar resembled something that I’d once done in craft lessons at high school, save that it was done extremely well.

It offered elements of rustic cabins, uneven wooden edges as they’d come straight from the trunk, matched by antler-like branches of wood on the walls.

However, as we twisted around in our seats, we began to appreciate that this place is huge. It was as if a New York restaurant had gone bust and some wily cove had bought all of the fixtures, fittings and chefs and transported them to little Napa.

The quite wondrous tuna pizza.

The tables stretch from the bar straight back to the river. They stretch all the way onto the terrace. They stretch to the right as you walk down, into another large room. Could this be why there seemed to be fifty people shuffling around the open kitchen, coming, going, and staying only to do some doing?

This isn’t a restaurant. This is one vast operating theater of war. It seems as if Morimoto has decided that you can only scale at scale. You can only gut fish if there are hundreds of people present, ready to swallow your talent and your pretexts and ready to declare you the winner.

The menu seems to have has many items as the restaurant has tables.

There are cold starters, hot starters, hot entrees, sushi and all sorts of other delightful elements. The Cordon Bleuhard and I tried to order a fine subsection, although we avoided the $75 wagyu beef. This would have been the tail wagyuing the dog.

First came the tuna pizza, which seemed to be adorned with anchovy aioli, olives and jalapeno. I have a personal aversion to both olives and jalapeno. The former taste to me only of mothballed wardrobe, the latter of a scalding poker, having been rammed up my behind, emerging through my mouth.

The Cordon Bleuhard knew this, which was, no doubt, why she ordered it.

What made me question my own being was that I loved this pizza. It spoke of an alive cleanliness I had last experienced at Tahoe in springtime. With a nun.

The crust was thinner than Amy Winehouse and the whole thing disappeared into my mouth like a secret. Was this going to be one of those meals in which the first thing you eat is the best and then everything fails to achieve precisely the same effect?

Well, yes. But wait.

Melon Tempura with Jamon Iberico

The melon tempura with Jamon Iberico was just the right side of sweet. And with a glass of passable chenin blanc– or in my resident expert’s case, a very tasty yuzu julep– it performed an excellent slide into my uninhabited regions.

It hadn’t introduced itself properly to my duodenum before along came Kakuni. This is ten-hour pork belly, rice congee and soy-scallion jus. This is utterly evil and utterly winning as its meaty richness glides between your teeth like a perfectly-bottomed speed-skater.

I know that the Cordon Bleuhard hadn’t looked at the menu beforehand. These three, her choices, were mistressful.

Because I have something of a sushi fetish, I thought I’d order a few basics to see what kind of nigiri falls from the fingers of iron men.

I looked at the menu and thought “gosh, this sushi is reasonable priced”. This was slightly before I realized it was priced by the single piece.

While we waited for it to arrive, we chatted to our server, who explained that she’d had two and a half weeks’ training, that most of the servers were local people and that many of the chefs had been imported from the East Coast to man the launch.

Ten hour pork belly. Gone in ten seconds.

The sushi was being made only by Japanese men, although I was vaguely disconcerted to see one of them smile, laugh and even pose for some ignorant tourist’s picture.

I am sorry. I should not have written that. I should have focused on their clothing rather than making mental allegations. I will come to the clothing shortly.

The sushi was good, but certain not better than that you will find at three Bay Area restaurants: Tsukiji, Sushi Ran and Sebo. Morimoto’s inventiveness doesn’t seem to appear in the traditional areas.

It was the traditional quilts, however, that almost spoiled the whole experience. When a restaurant emphasizes style as well as substance, when its vast vibrancy offers something one doesn’t normally associate with Napa, how tempting it must be to institute a strict, if subjective, dress code.

The sushi.

On the evidence of my one visit, might I suggest a dress code that Morimoto might enforce?

1. Women are not allowed to wear quilts. I don’t care if it cost $400. I don’t care if you bought it in a boutique in St. Helena or St. Kitts. I don’t care if it’s warm and ecological. If you come to my restaurant wearing something I last saw in my dead aunt’s house on a bed (and I am not referring to my dead aunt), then you can’t come in.

2. Prints in general must be tasteful. And if you don’t know what tasteful is, don’t wear prints. There were people in Morimoto Napa– alright, yes, women– who didn’t seem to understand the most basic principles of camouflage. It’s supposed to cover you up. It is not supposed to make you look like you are modeling Bulgarian wallpaper.

3. Old white fat men must wear dark colors. Somehow, there seemed to be far too many portly gentlemen of some years who thought they looked good in white, baggy, woolly things. No. And certainly not if they’re sleeveless.

Perhaps I should not preach my peeves as gospel. But I do feel, given that the servers were largely the best dressed on, no doubt, the most meager budgets, you’d think the hoi polloi might have done something to assuage my need to pour hoi sin all over their whole polloi.

The servers were clearly models of taste, grace and efficiency. So I was slightly disturbed that, during a conversation with our server, one of the managers, in a short, unfetching dress of very borderline print, hovered over and tried to attract her attention in the style of a uniformed goon on “Prison Break”.

This seemed to herald the arrival of dessert. Which heralded the arrival of a limpid end to an enjoyable evening.

The Cordon Bleuhard prefers to rule wherever she can. When it comes to desserts, she prefers to overrule. She knows better and that is all she has to say, for it is all she knows.

No, that is not a nipple. That is your dessert.

So she ordered some kind of creme brulee nonsense. Blueberry and earl grey, I believe.

I am open-minded, but when a $12 dessert is the size of a British one pound coin, then my seat at the sushi bar tends to vibrate.

This was the size of an amuse-bouche. In reality, it was an abuse-poche.

This was the equivalent of someone throwing a brick through your window and then ringing the doorbell to see how far it went.

This is not how a generally very good meal should end. It should end with a temptation towards a dessert wine, a port, or a coffee. It should not end with the grunt of an elk with hemorrhoids. (That was the Bleuhard, not me.)

Oh, Morimoto. I will not give you scores, like those unemployed actresses and oily, unlovable food writers on “Iron Chef, Yankee Version”.

I will simply entreat you to heed my small suggestions. If you don’t I shall be forced to put on a large cloth nappy and push you into the Napa River while you shout for help in a New York accent.

I know you speak English, you see. I just know you do.

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