If The Next Iron Chef experience has taught Jose Garces one thing, it's a new appreciation of Japanese cuisine.

Garces and fellow contestants spent 10 days there this spring to shoot several episodes of the Food Network cooking battle, whose finale will be Sunday night (11/22).

Garces doesn't serve Japanese-anything at his stable of restaurants (Amada, Tinto, Chifa, Distrito, Village Whiskey, Mercat a la Planxa), but he says he was blown away by takoyaki.

"It's an octopus fritter that I had in Tokyo," Garces told me during a phone chat.

He plans to bend the rules and put it on the menu in a few weeks at Chifa, his Chinese-Latin place at 707 Chestnut St.

Last night, Philly chef Jose Garces survived a Japanese challenge on The Next Iron Chef, which puts him and NY's Jehangir Mehta into a one-on-one battle at Kitchen Stadium that will be shown Sunday (11/22) at 9 p.m. on Food Network.

The prize: The exposure of being an Iron Chef.

Hmm. New York vs. Philly.

Garces will host a viewing party at his West Philly Mexican restaurant, Distrito.

Starts at 8:30 p.m. It's $50 a head (plus tax and tip). Bill of fare includes Distrito food, including ceviche and guacamole and salsa Mexicana stations, and passed hot dishes such as lamb chops, adobo chicken and shrimp skewers, hongos huarache and a variety of tacos, beer, red and white wine, red and white sangria, and margaritas. (Reservations: 215-222-1657.)

Unlike the kickoff party on the first floor that Garces threw when the show premiered, this fiesta will encompass the entire restaurant and will involve extra TVs.

So...?

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Based on a  tour this afternoon, construction of Michael Schulson's pan-Asian restaurant, Sampan, is progressing nicely at 122 S. 13th St., just off Sansom.

He's expecting work to finish on Nov. 25, and an opening closer to Dec. 15.

Among the wows will be color-changing graphic walls on both sides, as well as an exhibition kitchen with counter seating.

The kitchen is just about done, and the rear storage area out back is being framed out (there will be an outdoor bar out there in the spring).

While touring the kitchen, I noticed a curious piece of equipment usually not found in an upmarket restaurant.

Click through to the second photo for the explanation.

Today-- Friday the 13th -- is the appropriate opening day for Lucky 7 Tavern, Jud Bertholf's redo of Aspen in Fairmount. Further, he's scheduled to unlock the door at 25th and Aspen at 7 p.m. Here's a peek at chef Sean Pashley's menu, which he cautions is a work in progress. Bertholf is proudest of that Lucky 7 burger, which is topped with scrapple, pork roll, provolone, Cheddar and a fried egg.

Kitchen 233 in Westmont closed last weekend and is being presto-changoed into Treno Pizza Bar. Same owners, PJ Whelihan's. The idea is to keep the typical check (pizza, pasta, glass of wine) at $25. It opens Monday (11/16) and is open nightly. Chef is Todd Fuller, last at Tangerine in Old City.

The restaurant just off the Schuylkill at Route 23 and Moorehead Avenue in West Conshohocken that's been Chiquita Loco and Bergey's and Big Fish and ... will become two restaurants by next weekend. One side will be known as M Bar and the other will be Theresa's, an Italian BYOB. Theresa's will provide M Bar's food.

Franco's Trattoria, on Ridge Avenue just off Kelly Drive in East Falls, is fixing to move around New Year's into the spot on the ground floor of the Presidential City Apartrments on City Avenue at the onramp to the eastbound Schuylkill Expressway. Previous occupant was O'Hara's.

Ota-Ya has closed its Warrington location; Lambertville and Newtown remain.

H.I. Rib & Co. lasted just over a year in the old Lonestar on Ridge Pike near Chemical Road in Conshy. Next occupant will be a diner.

For 99.5 percent of the rock bands on tour, life on the road is not easy: 

Economic realities dictate it. Unless you're an arena-filler, one-night-stand budgets seldom accommodate tour buses, which can cost $1,000 a day. The vehicle of choice is the 15-passenger Ford E-150 van, driven by a road manager and occasionally pulling a trailer, which is parked outside of lower-cost hotels.

Where thieves lie in wait. Those vans sitting in surface lots are easy marks.

»  More Philly: Rock and roll and ripoffs

Burgers, burgers everywhere, and Jeff Jolles and his son Michael, who own Bain’s Deli, are getting into the game with Burger Maestro.

Next week, they'll expand their footprint in the Bellevue's subterranean food court.

They have an in-house grinding machine, french fry cutter, and char broiler.

Besides beef burgers, there will be turkey, veggie and buffalo burgers, Chicago hot dogs and chicken breasts. One burger, called "the Rap," has lettuce in place of the bun.

Hiroyuki “Zama” Tanaka is several weeks from opening Zama, his first Japanese restaurant, just north of Rittenhouse Square, where Loie used to be (128 S. 19th St., 215-568-1027).

Tanaka came to Philly from Japan about 20 years ago to study at Temple University, and ended up working at such restaurants as Pod and Morimoto.

He's retained Jun Aizaki of Crème Design Collective, who's created Amada and Distrito, to do the 80-seater, which will have an eight-seat sushi bar and a 14-seat private room.

»  More Zama time!

Sushikazu -- which won all kinds of praise among Blue Bell's sushi cognescenti -- closed recently.

But a popular Horsham sushi-ist is moving into the space at Routes 73 and 202:

Jay Park, who owns Yama in Horsham Square Shopping Center, near the Naval Air Station. Park worked from the mid-1980s through 1993 at the late Windows on the World in the World Trade Center in New York.

Park is selling the Horsham spot but will stay open until he opens Yama in early December.

I cannot locate the last owners of Sushikazu. The restaurant won its following under founder Bruce Kim, who now owns Misso in Center City One at 1326 Spruce St.

Meteorologist Rob Guarino, the Fox29 emigre who started doing mornings at KOAT in Albuquerque, N.M., a year ago, has given notice to his station and will come back east.

Family reasons, he told me. 

His dad back in Wilmington, Bob, is ailing, he said.

That, and he misses his two kids.

"It's been great here," said Guarino, who does not have a new job. "It's that simple."

He said he would remain until his replacement is named, which could be anytime between December to February.