Grill it like Teppanyaki

Recently, I partook in the time-honored American tradition of eating foreign foods. Eating ethnic food, as they call it, has been popular in these United States ever since the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts many hundreds of years ago. After unexpectedly arriving at a rocky New England coastline (due to GPS error) and finding the natives (Indians, as they called them) chewing on corn husks and fish heads, our brave Founding Fathers determined that the first order of business, after signing the Mayflower Compact, would be to find out if the local Taco Bell would deliver.

And so, in a brave attempt to follow in those estimable footsteps, I went with my friend Nate to a Japanese steakhouse called Yuki’s. It is worth noting, for the benefit of those generations that will follow in our meager footsteps, that the name of the aforementioned restaurant does not rhyme with ducky. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it; we did not actually confirm that with the management. It is also worth noting that Yuki’s restaurant contains a section entirely devoted to the time-honored Japanese tradition, since the 1940's and really only in America, of teppanyaki.

Nate and I were led to a large back room, which looked like it could pass for a surgical laboratory in medical school. There were large beds, which actually turned out to be grills, surrounded by lights and chairs. The kind hostess directed us to two chairs in the back and then invited two other families to sit with us. We did not know these people, although we could deduce, simply by their very presence at this restaurant, that they were also true patriots, bravely attempting to follow in the estimable footsteps of our Founding Fathers.

After a few minutes of checking our blood pressure and other vitals, the kind hostess brought us water, which is not technically a foreign food, per se, and soup, which consisted primarily of water. It also contained the unidentifiable remains of some unfortunate creature, or plant – I could not really tell which, but was surprised to find it to be the best tasting water soup I’ve ever had. Our kind hostess also brought us an appetizer, which quite ironically, was the same one Nate and I had selected a few minutes before: salmon asparagus rolls. In preparation for this particular dish, salmon are fed a steady diet of nothing but asparagus and Sauvignon Blanc, then harvested and rolled into a ball. I found them to be, in a word, interesting, although they did go well with the teppan sauce, a traditional Japanese sauce made out of leftover grills.

I took a few minutes to examine the menu and, as is the case with most foreign food restaurants, found it to be entirely unhelpful. There were a few pictures, but they were accompanied by words in Japanese script that may or may not have had any English influence along the way. As a side note, this is why I never go to Welsh restaurants. For one thing, the menu is hundreds of pages long: the Welsh word for fish is “Llanfairpwllgwyngllgogerychwyrndrobwlllantysiliogogogochggorsafwddachaidraigodanheddogle-ddollonpenrhynareurdraethceredigion.” So anyway, I simply told the kind hostess I would have the chicken, hoping against hope that it would not be served if the form of the chicken noodle soup I’d heard of from the Orient. In Taiwan, the recipe for chicken noodle soup is very simple: Open pot, insert chicken, noodles, and water. Some versions allow for killing the chicken first.

Then the fun began. The grill master came out with a cart of food, spices, sauces, and grilling implements. The first thing he did was to set the entire grill on fire in a massive fireball which resulted in the loss of two of my eyebrows. Then he covered the entire grill in a blanket of rice and various meats and spent the next few minutes moving it around (the rice), flipping it (the meat), and tossing it (the grilling implements) into the air. He also spent a great deal of time tapping his grilling implements against the grill surface. And when I say “tapping,” I mean hitting in such a loud fashion as to make conversation impossible. It was a fascinating experience. When the food was ready, he deftly scooped it up with his grilling implements and placed it directly on our plates.

When the time came to eat, I discovered why there are no obese Japanese people: chopsticks. In Japan, silverware has not been invented yet, so food must be transferred from the plate to the mouth by means of two clumsy sticks, which are often held in the same hand. In India, a nation also yet to discover the most basic eating implements, they simply use their hands, but the Japanese are more dignified than that. Anyway, the two-stick method does not lend itself to rapid food consumption and, in many cases, causes would-be consumers of food to simply give up in desperation, or boredom, and pursue other interests.

Fortunately, Yuki’s provides forks for their customers, thereby dramatically reducing the amount of time each visitor must spend in the restaurant. I found the food to be delicious, although not really all that different than the Japanese stir-fry and rice that this blog’s wife will sometimes prepare at home. Though, I must say, I have often suspected my wife of being a secret Japanese agent (as Bill Cosby says, of his wife, “...she took a yardstick, and held it like a samurai warrior…”), so maybe there is a reason for this similarity in food quality. If you’re ever in the area though, forget the cow loving chicken restaurant next door and give Yuki’s a try. Your eyebrows will never be the same.