FINALLY after my two week vacation in Korea life returns to normal (at least as normal as we get). Saturday night was date night again. We left Sean in the capable hands of his baby sitter and Tracy and I took our friend from NY into Kobe.
This week we chose a cooking style called Robatayaki. I will try to describe it for you. It was a small restaurant with a U-shaped table in the middle. Around the table was probably 20 seats. In the center stands the cook in front of a grill. Surrounding him is a display of all kinds of food items - meat, fish, and vegetables. All of the food is raw. There is no menu or prices to be found. All you do is point at what you want, he grabs it, and throws it on the grill. Once it is done he pulls out a big wooden paddle that looks like a boat oar, puts the cooked food on it, and passes it to you (all without leaving his station).
We had all kinds of good stuff - chicken kabobs, steak, scallops, potatoes, salmon, mushrooms, asparagus, ..... We tried just about everything except some items with suction cups. It was a cool atmosphere and really good food. Also as usual we were the only foreigners there and the other diners seemed to have fun watching us.
A little history - Robatayaki takes its name from the Japanese words ro and yaki. The former refers to a square hearth around which peasants would gather for warmth and cooking. Yaki means "grilled," and in the old days the grilling would have been done over charcoal.
The picture above was our chef Saturday evening. He is standing behind the grill and you can see the food all around him. Just point and he throws it on the grill! Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the paddle.
Here are the three of us after a great meal!
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