Recently for cousin Q's birthday, my brother suggested Shogun Japanese Restaurant in Pasadena for the teppanyaki show. My only other teppanyaki experience was with the Benihana chain, and beyond a few knife tosses (mainly for the benefit of the all-female group I was with), I don't recall anything amazing happened with the food. My brother promised Shogun would be better.
My brother and I split a seafood combo of halibut, shrimp, scallops, and calimari for $20.95 and cousin Q and his little brother split a filet mignon dinner for $23.50.
Our salad was the standard ginger-carrot dressing, or rather our dressing came with a bit of salad. :P
The soup looked like the standard miso soup but it wasn't. There were a few cubes of tofu. And the flavor was that of thin onion slivers that had been breaded and fried, then used to flavor the soup. Ick!
We ordered the chicken karaage appetizer with sweet and sour and spicy teriyaki sauces for $5.50. Basically, chicken nuggets, but they were good and the spicy sauce had a nice kick.
Here's our chef making our fried rice. With a big glob of butter. See? My Japanese version of fried rice with butter wasn't such a bad approximation after all.
Afterward, he shaped the rice into a heart and turned on the grill so that the heart was red and was "beating." Unfortunately, the effect barely lasted a few seconds.
I was envious because I saw one of the other chefs take a bowl of fried rice and place it on his spatula, he flipped it in the air and caught it again on his spatula. Our chef merely scooped our rice into bowls and placed it in front of us. :(
Then came the "secret sauces." Thousand island and something else I can't recall.Here's our meat and veggies cooking on the teppan (grill). Actually, it was the whole table's order so half of that belonged to two other couples.
One of their signature moves is making a little "volcano" and "choo choo train" out of onions.
And here he is slicing and dicing our meats.
This is actually just one order of the seafood combo, split among two plates since my brother and I were sharing.
And yes, we did pick at cousin Q's filet mignon, but it wasn't a very big piece to begin with.
So while the food was good (because it's hard to mess up with a nice hot griddle), the show wasn't as spectacular as I was expecting. I think it really depends on who you get as a chef and how much they want to interact with the table. And I think they definitely perform more for a group of women and children, who are more likely to ooh and aah at their antics.
You can also order sushi, but why would you if you can get a show?
Psst! For my Inland Valley readers, there's a Shogun in La Verne.
Shogun Japanese Restaurant (various locations)
470 N. Halstead St.
Pasadena, CA 91107
626-351-8945
Monday - Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Saturday 12 noon to 10:30 p.m.
Sunday 12 noon to 9:30 p.m.
that sauce isn't thousand island. its actually called shrimp sauce. looks very similar to thousand island but the taste is different if made correctly which includes a labor intesive list because it usually cannot be reproduce into a small batch. the other sauce i am guessing is a ginger sauce but not sure why there are sesame seeds in it. hope you enjoyed the food. it really does depend on which chef you get to what the show is like. each chef have their own little tricks that they don't want to teach others and have learned for years. makes me miss the time i got to watch my cousins perform for us.
ReplyDeletei been to benihana and wasabi. they was throwing shrimp down girls shirts. i got mad when they threw in mine. those shrimps leave oil stains! grrr! they made a cucumber dick with ranch dressing squirting out and made the birthday girl suck on it, but she bit it off instead. id say embarrassing moment for girls.
ReplyDeletet
bluang3lbby,
ReplyDeleteShrimp sauce huh? All reddish-mayonnaisey sauces taste like thousand island to me. :P
t,
Yeah, I'm glad we didn't get that kind of a show. Ick!
if made properly it shouldn't taste like thousand island. i definetely know since thousand island is my favorite salad dressing when i order out and we make 60 gallon batches of shrimp sauce every 2 or 3 days.
ReplyDeletePlease tell me how to properly make this sauce please
Deletebluang3lbby,
ReplyDelete60 gallons!!! That's insane. In all honesty, I really don't remember exactly what it tasted like. It wasn't exactly thousand island either, but not very "shrimpy" to me. But then I didn't know to look for it, so by appearance, my default tastebuds probably just assumed thousand island. ;)
actually its not suppose to taste "shrimpy" either since there is not shrimp in it. i'm not exactly sure why its called shrimp sauce in the first place. but yea we make batches of about 60 gallons at least 3 times every two weeks during the summer and much much more during the fall and winter.
ReplyDeletebluang3lbby,
ReplyDeleteYou own or work in a teppanyaki restaurant? Or you consume that much shrimp sauce in the home? Wowee!
we own the fast food type of a japanese restaurant. our cousins use to own the teppanyaki but it is so much easier doing a fast food one then a teppanyaki one. because with the fast good one, you only need to have just one main grill rather then one for each table of guests.
ReplyDeletebluang3lbby,
ReplyDeleteYou should have a food blog then!