A New Food Experience

Last night was another new experience for me here in Colorado. Rob's sister - Donna - and her daughter, Brianne have been here all week visiting Pam, Rob and the baby and Arlene. Last night was their last night here before leaving for Staten Island, NY early this morning. It was also the first time I had gotten to see Donna and Brianne, as they have all been up in the mountains most of the week skiing. Last night we all went out to dinner at the Hibachi Steakhouse...a Japanese restaurant. It was definitely a new restaurant experience for me. My mother always taught me "not to play with my food", but this is exactly what they do in this restaurant. The eating area is shaped like a horseshoe only squared off at the corners and we sit on stools. The area seats about 15 people. On both inner sides of the island are gas grills where the food is prepared in front of you. Each grill has a chef who literally "plays" with the food as he is preparing it. The first thing he does is pour oil on the grill and ignite it, which causes a huge wall of fire to flare up in front of you!! Then they put all the rice and veggies on the grill and proceed to stir and cook with two spatulas. If you accidentally say - as I did - that you don't like something (My mistake was mushrooms)...they will throw some at you! They bang on the grills with their utensils and do tricks with them....I told Pam,"Who needs to pay $20 a meal to see the cook do tricks???" They chop and mix and everything right on the grill with numerous jokes and tricks in between cooking, and throwing food at the other chef or the customers. They split an onion into rings and then stacked the rings like a beehive. Then they pour something inside of the stack and ignite it....looks awesome. The menu was expensive but excellent food. We all had Japanese onion soup as our appetizer and then I had rice, steamed veggies, and teraki salmon. I'll never eat salmon out of a can again!! Pam and Rob, Donna and Brianne had steak and chicken combos with fried rice and Arlene had shrimp,NY steak strips, and chicken with noodles. Donna and I agreed that instead of offering their guests after-dinner mints they should have offered aspirin, as that place was noisy. Just our table of 15 was so noisy, Siena had to be held the whole time as she was freightened by the loud bangs on the pans and grill. Pam and Rob fed each other while they took turns holding Siena. That's what I called dedication...hope someone got pictures of that. Rob had his camera with him but was too busy trying to comfort Siena and feed Pam to get many pictures until they changed shifts. Donna and Brianne also had cameras so I'm sure eventually pictures will be on their web site. Except for the noise, the ambience and food were excellent. Nice place for a special occassion, but too pricy to eat there on a regular basis. Someday, when I can afford to buy it, I'd like to try making some salmon with the teraki sauce like they did - only without throwing it all over the kitchen!!