Even at the moment of their greatest glory, the city's chefs can't get away from the problem of food costs. Wall Street Journal reporter Elva Ramirez went to the Beard Awards on Sunday and asked some chefs what to do about rising food costs. Masaharu Morimoto is all for cooking in big batches and then freezing it all away. “Bigger is better,” the big-box chef says, unsurprisingly. “Cook one time. Save gas, save energy.” Not everyone agreed with this Swanson program, however. Michael Psilakis, as one might expect, sung the praises of offal as a solution: “It's really a test of a true chef to take something that may not be the best part of an animal and make something beautiful with it.” David Chang, asked about the subject, doesn't give an inch: Let people pay more — they'll just appreciate the food more. “We'll have a better food culture … Just because [food is] more expensive, don't compromise and buy an inferior product.” Frozen dinners, offal, the stiff upper lip … if these are the best solutions chefs can come up with, we better start just eating canned corn and be done with it.

Chefs Talk Quality and Cost at the James Beard Awards [WSJ]

Grub Street has learned that Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto has taken a big hit in state supreme court. A judge has ruled that Morimoto’s original business partner, Donald Fellner, is entitled to 45 percent of profits from his restaurants in New York, Philadelphia, and India, plus profits from certain endorsements and finally two appearances on Iron Chef for which Morimoto received a whopping $20,000. The partial judgment (which you can read here) states that in 2000, after Fellner befriended the future Iron Chef at the restaurant where Morimoto worked, they formed a company, Moridon, in which Morimoto and Fellner had 55/45 stakes. Moridon then entered into a contract with Steven Starr’s company, but according to the court, Morimoto broke the terms of that joint-operating agreement in 2004 by adding an amendment which unfairly excluded Fellner from Morimoto New York and all future ventures with Starr.

We’ve got in our hot little hands a not-for-distribution marketing blad for Masaharu Morimoto’s cookbook Morimoto: Recipes and Techniques From the Japanese Iron Chef, a $40 227-pager to be published by DK in September of 2007. There are no real surprises among the 125 recipes — tuna pizza, blowfish skin caprese, yuzu foam, and of course the Iron Chef’s famous Duck, Duck, Duck — but hidden in the sales points is this juicy news: “Another sushi bar opening in Boca Raton and — top secret (until now) — another in Delhi.” Morimoto’s publicist confirms that a Delhi project (Morimoto’s second in India) is in the preliminary stages. —Daniel Maurer