How a Japanese chef’s experiment at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics changed minds about frozen food
- Former Imperial Hotel chef Nobuo Murakami was one of four chefs for the Olympic Village in 1964
- His menu using frozen ingredients passed the taste test with officials, and today, frozen cutlets and croquettes are used in Japanese home cooking
When more than 7,000 athletes and officials from around the world arrived in Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics, the endeavour to feed them nutritious and tasty meals involved procuring as much as 15 tonnes of meat, six tonnes of vegetables and 29,000 eggs a day.
Amid preparations for the Games, food storage became a concern for chefs at the Olympic Village. That was when Nobuo Murakami – a French-trained executive chef at Tokyo’s storied Imperial Hotel, who had been appointed one of four chefs in charge of the Olympic Village cafeterias – drew inspiration from his time at the Games in Italy four years earlier.
“Murakami went to the Rome Olympics and realised that freezing food would allow us to store large amounts of ingredients ... and avoid price increases by buying large amounts of food at one go,” said Kenichiro Tanaka, the Imperial Hotel’s executive culinary adviser.
Tanaka joined the Imperial Hotel in 1969 and worked with Murakami for 36 years before the senior chef’s passing in 2005 at the age of 84.
While frozen food was available in Japan at the time, the lowest temperature for non-commercial fridges then was about -15 degrees Celsius – three degrees above the recommended temperature for freezing food, in keeping with the prevailing notion that chefs and home cooks should use fresh or chilled ingredients for tastier meals.