This week, okonomiyaki, hold the ‘bam!’

THE Ishikura brothers are on a dangerous mission in the name of seafood curry.

The two longtime fishermen and a small crew have led their shrimp trawler into rough and rocky waters off the coast of Kihoku, located in Mie prefecture in central-west Japan, known for its Ise lobsters and Matoya oysters. But the Ishikuras are hunting for the small, sometimes elusive lobsters called akaza ebi, their boat beset by crashing waves as they navigate life-threatening rocks.

Just another Saturday night in front of the TV -- the Ishikuras’ akaza ebi are a featured ingredient on a recently aired episode of the Japanese “New Dotch Cooking Show” (an updated version of “Dotchi no Ryori,” which roughly translates to “ ‘Which One’ Cooking”).

The series -- part cooking show, part game show, part reality show, part documentary -- airs Saturday nights on Asian-language cable station KSCI (the program, with English subtitles, is listed as “Cooking Showdown”). With its frenetic pace, glistening food close-ups, slapstick humor, a soundtrack that might include a Debbie Harry hit or a heavy metal ballad, and some of the general quirkiness that catapulted the original “Iron Chef” to cult fandom, it has gained an enthusiastic following of Japanese and non-Japanese viewers.

As far as foreign food television goes, the real action is happening in Japan, says Bruce Seidel, Food Network’s senior vice president of program planning and special productions, who helped bring “Tetsujin no Ryori” -- “Iron Chef” -- to the cable network. “The British set the standard with food demonstration shows,” Seidel says, “but the Japanese are pushing the format. They’re the innovators.”

The series, produced by Yomiuri Telecasting Corp., is on hiatus in Japan except for the occasional special, and so the number of episodes to be aired in Los Angeles by United Television Broadcasting Systems is limited. UTB’s license to broadcast the show ends in June. As with the final episodes of “The Sopranos,” catch it while you can. Paulie Walnuts is going to be missed, but so will Tsuyoshi Kusanagi -- a regular on “New Dotch” and a former member of Japanese boy band SMAP -- who might be considered the consigliere of the show.

It’s a complicated format, centered on a contest between two dishes, such as seafood curry versus eggplant-hikiniku (ground meat) curry, or miso ramen versus shio ramen. Two excitable hosts, Hiroshi Sekiguchi and Yuji Miyake, are the cheerleaders for each dish and present them to a panel of celebrity judges who, at the end of the show, vote on which dish they would rather eat.

The hitch is they don’t get to taste the dishes before they vote. And here’s the real kicker: Only those who voted for the winning dish get to eat it. The losers stand around holding their stomachs in hunger pangs.

From their seats in the peanut gallery, the judges (usually nine or 11 of them, who are different each episode except for the regular Kusanagi) watch -- and smell -- as the food is prepared by guest chefs in two on-set kitchens, host Sekiguchi’s red kitchen and Miyake’s yellow kitchen. While they see succulent “Tokyo X” pork being fried up or scallops being grilled over charcoal, they’ll yell out, “Tabetai desu!” (“I want to eat!”).

Bells a-ringing

TWO headset-wearing announcers, one dressed in a red suit, the other in a yellow suit (they look as if they work for competing car rental agencies), serve as emcees, keeping an eye on the time and directing attention between the two kitchens with weird metaphorical cues.

“Over here we have received a postcard,” one announcer shouts, pointing to a pot on the stove as the camera sweeps from one kitchen to the other. “It’s curry that looks like a painting!” (Or they might be more direct: “Mr. Miyake, look over here!”) Meanwhile, lights are a-flashing and bells a-ringing throughout each episode.

It all sounds rather ludicrous, but much of the show is devoted to poignant exploration of the provenance of tokusen sozai, or the “key ingredient,” featured in each dish, whether it’s akaza ebi, pickled young ginger, Jidori free-range chickens, Kurobuta pork belly from Okinawa, gagome seaweed harvested and then finely shredded by hand at certain times of the year, potatoes from Hokkaido or small-production fresh tofu.

An educational element snaps into play as the judges and audience watch mini-documentaries of how products such as somen noodles or giant eggplant are manufactured or harvested. Eggplant for the eggplant-hikiniku curry are from Yamaguchi prefecture and grow to several times the size of regular Japanese eggplant. More shouts from the peanut gallery: “Sugoi!” “Okii!” (“Amazing!” “Big!”).

Meanwhile, switch to the Food Network and -- as the Ishikuras are at sea attempting to catch akaza ebi -- Emeril Lagasse is advising his audience to invest in a salad spinner so their lettuce is always dry.

Often, the regular Kusanagi is in the kitchen, serving as liaison between the judges and hosts, discussing the ingredients and the techniques with which they’re cooked. One judge might be picked to taste a certain ingredient and relay any insights to the rest of the panel. The hosts Sekiguchi and Miyake taste throughout the show, making comments like, “The flavor blossoms in the mouth like a flower.”

This is all the information by which the judges make their final decision. It all comes down to the ingredients.

“Certain ingredients are considered best if they come from a certain part of Japan, whether it’s hidaka kombu [seaweed] or a certain type of turnip that grows best in a certain area near Kyoto,” says Miyako Bird, assistant director of UCLA’s Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. “And much of this is common knowledge.

“Even for younger Japanese who don’t cook so much, these traditions are important and are probably much of what draw them to the show.”

But non-Japanese get it too. “I love that [the show] switches to a completely different perspective, from the artificial world of the stage set to the craftsmanship” of various artisans, fan Lisa Sitko says.

Chatting it up

UTB expects to broadcast another Japanese cooking show by midsummer to succeed “New Dotch.” It’s a hard act to follow, but so much Japanese food programming is so smart, interesting and entertaining that it almost certainly will be worth checking out.

Among the shows under consideration by UTB is “Oshaberi Cooking”: “It’s chatting during cooking,” says UTB’s Ikuya Fuchigami, head of programming. “Or cooking during chatting.”

Another is “Chubou Desu Yo!” (“Here’s the Kitchen!”), a cooking demo show with accomplished guest chefs and hosted by Masaaki Sakai, a Japanese celebrity who fronted the Spiders, a ‘60s band (part of the “group sounds” Japanese music genre). He went on to further fame as the star of the TV program, “Saiyuki,” that was picked up and dubbed in the early ‘80s by the BBC and renamed “Monkey.”

“He’s really funny,” Fuchigami says. Hopefully, Sakai’s humor translates.

Any chance for a cross-cultural jump for “New Dotch Cooking Show” to a major American network? While the Food Network continues to milk the success of “Iron Chef” (“The Next Iron Chef of America” premieres in the fall), there are no plans to show “New Dotch,” Seidel says. “There’s a lot of nuance that could be missed, more off-the-cuff talking that would be hard to translate.”

Then I guess we might not be seeing the even more offbeat “Ai no Apron” (“The Apron of Love”) or “Tommy’s no Harapeko Tei” (“Tommy’s Starving Restaurant”) or that oldie but goodie “Tamashi no One Spoon” (“The Soul of One Spoon”) anytime soon.

betty.hallock@latimes.com