Art and Teppanyaki

One of us celebrated our birthday during our vacation to Japan.

Our family decided that for his birthday dinner, we'd not join the group for dinner but go out on our own to have a nice meal.

He wanted teppanyaki, so we found and booked the Teppanyaki restaurant in the hotel for dinner that evening.

I always thought that teppanyaki is just food cooked on a hot iron griddle.. and it wasn't really anything special.

I was so wrong.

The dinner that night was the nicest meal we had during our vacation.

The restaurant was a small cosy restaurant with 4 iron griddles. We occupied one of them and each chose a 6 to 8 course dinner.

Our chef looked young and inexperienced.

But he wasn't. He went about cooking each of our dishes in front of us, in a quiet, non-showy way. (not like those teppanyaki "performances" you sometimes see outside)

Every course was cooked in a superbly efficient manner. He used a different plate for every course and each dish was carefully arranged in a most artistic manner.

It was like watching art-in-motion.

We really enjoyed the dinner and even though we were all so full by the end of the meal, we all managed to finish a slice of the chestnut birthday cake. It was just the slightest bit creamy and had a hint of alcohol in it.

It was the perfect ending to a very wonderful dinner.

The starters and the cooking of the "decorations"

The seafood and meat were all plated tastefully and 

all these were done in front of us..

 From left clockwise: okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake), 
Wagyu beef and Japanese fried noodles

Our desserts - green tea ice-cream and chestnut cake 
(we bought the cake from a shop whose name I have forgotten)

President Chibo

Address: B1 Sheraton Miyako Hotel Osaka
Actually, Chibo is a chain store. The normal Chibo restaurants specialises in Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). President Chibo specialises in steak. See here for more details on President Chibo.