Saturday, September 18, 2010

Teppanyaki Juggling

A new restaurant has recently opened in Chennai called Teppanyaki as an addition to the old Thai restaurant Benjarong on TTK Road. Teppanyaki, as Wikipedia informs us stands for teppan (iron plate) and yaki (grill) and is a style of Japanese cooking which grills and stir fries on an iron griddle. It is usually done in front of the diners so that the chef can show off his prowess. Most of the food is of the stir fried style, but produced with great style and elan.

So here is our chef warming up, throwing his weapons around with great abandon, and rather worryingly, missing occasionally. (I apologise for the poor quality -- the light was insufficient, and I also couldn't find a way to turn some of the videos around).

Some tricks with a bowl

And then with eggs. Watch carefully how they land on his spatula and yet don't break - though there are a couple of mishaps as you can see. Can you figure why the eggs don't break despite landing on a solid steel spatula? (you will need to turn your head to see this video).

And finally, here is a generic one of him doing the actual cooking.

A set menu (soup, salad, main course, which is the teppanyaki, noodles/rice and a dessert bar) costs around Rs. 950 to Rs 1150 depending on which set you choose. There is also a la carte which will probably set you back a similar amount, though without as many items, but with more choice.

Overall an interesting experience, though regrettably the food gets a B. But that probably has something to do with it being Chennai :-(. The one in Hip Asia (Connemara) is better.

3 comments:

Ravi KR said...

Some one else I know visited the place as well. Their comment was that the dessert section was not something 'ethnic Japanese' and settled for the dessert at Bakery downstairs only. It seemed to expensive to have French Loaf's desserts at Teppan.

Rahul Basu said...

Indeed the dessert section is just transplanted from French Loaf downstairs. (I guess the Japanese don't have too many desserts, that too ones Indians will like). Moreover their system is quite weird. Since I took the set menu which includes dessert, I had to go to the dessert section, pick something(s) and eat it there! My wife who chose a la carte was ineligible for this which is fine I guess, but making people eat in separate places so that they don't share with 'ineligible' people is strange, to say the least!

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