Sunday was one cool day. Actually, it was a day when I managed NOT to do anything ^^; I'm so proud of myself. Okay fine I did something on Sunday. It was dinner at Tony's Teppanyaki with my Legion of Mary Praesidium. Ineser went too. Woot. Yes you got it right. Its 鉄板焼き. We were celebrating the birthdays of 4 people, 3 of whom were priests. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!. OH any I should slip in a shout out to my friend and coursemate Tabletier. HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2 U 2!!! May your days be full of joy and less assignments to do! Anyway, back to the Teppan. I don't get to eat stuff like this very often. It is proof that extracurricular activities are GOOD FOR YOU. Thus, You should join a club. Preferably the SOS Brigade.
I really regretted not taking a camera with me, so I was pretty sad when I wanted to take the signboard for all to see. I'll post it up later when I get it. But, for now, lets just dive into the juice shall we?
First of all, the place was pretty neat. All the chairs and stuff were... well... Perhaps I should say something about the place. Its opened by a Malaysian. So all the chairs were neatly arranged like you'll see in any posh restaurant back home. Mind you, all the food there is still Japanese. Basically, we sat down and while we waited for the meals to be cooked in front of us, they put some little appetizers on the table for our eating pleasure.
Needless to say, as with all things Japanese, even the appetizers were awesome. These were fried sushi balls, which I didn't recognize until pandaeyes, who gave me the photo, told me that it was sushi. Gosh what part of it looks like sushi?! Hell, it tasted nice though.
Along with it also came the sashimi with cooked rice balls and cooked fish inside. Yes I was pretty disappointed that they didn't serve raw sushi. Maybe its because westerners don't like raw food? But seriously, we were all Asians craving for raw Japanese food, and there was raw fish on the plate (rolls eyes.) Whatever though, it was great to have sashimi the second time this year. YES! OSU!
Next up, a cook came and cooked for the priests first. He would be what my sister called a Shuai Ge, but I didn't bother with males. Then, after that went off leaving us wondering what happened. Then all of a sudden, an army (of 3) chefs came forth and cooked on the 3 Teppans. We were sitting at one of them. The oldest cook (and definitely the most professional looking one) came to our Teppan. Hurray.
A flatmate of mine is a Teppanyaki chef too, so he told us about how the chefs have to make the cooking look stylish in front of us while making it looks nice. Well, I was definitely expecting a show and a show I got. Basically, what happens is the chefs do everything elaborately. Even placing oil on the pan had to have some kind of style and used both spreaders. There was lots of knife throwing and spinning and tool swapping with a little pocket hanging off their belt. After lots of high speed Cooking Master Boy action and swashbuckling Yakitate Japan moves, the first dish was served. Seafood. Salmon, Blue Cod and a prawn split in half. How awesome.
Next up was the beef. oh yes the beef. It was cool. This was the part where after an elaborate sequence of chopping and cooking and cutting and salt shaker throwing, he lit the damn thing on fire. O.O Yes. I was surprised. Another table lit the fire up and distracted me when all a sudden I saw the fire in front of my and I was like OMFG OMFG OMFG. MOETERU!
Next up was vegetables. Well... It was western indeed. Not much along the lines of the leafy vegetables I like to eat. People who know me usually think I don't like vegetables. Its not that I don't like it. I'm just a little picky, and I don't go for carrots (despite my nickname) and celery and radishes and such. I like leaves better. So yeah not much to say here, other than that since pandaeyes showed me that she liked it I decided to try it out. All I can say is, its sweet @_@.
Next up was chicken. The chef promised me to do another fire show for the chicken and so it happened. It was great, except the chicken seemed to take longer to cook than the beef. I always thought that the tougher the meat the harder it was to cook. Looks like chicken is tougher than beef. who knows o.o. The chicken was a juicy, tender wreck. It was so good it basically melted in my mouth like cotton candy in a kid's hand and it tasted slightly salty and sweet, and even had the little pinch of vinegar to it. Made it all the more interesting.
Finally, the chef managed to cook another 2 more plates of beef and chicken meat for us, before we sang the birthday songs and had the priests blow the candles on the cakes. Last but not least, was of course the cakes themselves. Actually each of us got served different flavours. But in an effort to prove that Barter Trade still exists in this world, and is still a fair way of exchanging goods of similar nature, I managed to get my hands on the green version of the cake as well. Woot.
Overall it was great, we had a good performance in front of us that carried out some reasonably good food. Otsukaresama deshita to the chefs and the organizers of the party. Will be looking forward to something like this again, since we Malaysians are just all about food. And I can't wait to tell my flatmate all about it.