by Mike Covers
In our 20s, as long as my friends and I could remember, our eternal restaurant of choice was a local Dennys near the Philadelphia International Airport. Its 24-hour operating style and ability to serve good food (to us, “good food” meant anything that did not require the staff to ask “For here or to go?”) consistently drew us to its non-smoking sections each time hunger or general boredom struck…which was rather often, due to our dull suburban surroundings. Of course, over half a decade of going to the same eatery took its toll on us in the forms of food losing its taste and the Dennys staff knowing our names better than those of their co-workers. We attempted variety in the forms of Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesdays, our houses, etc. but nothing really stuck.
Then my friend Bill went to Hibachi.
Hibachi is a hyper-local version of the more popular Benihana, which is of course renowned for being among the best in (Americanized) Japanese cuisine. None of us had EVER seen Bill as excited about ANYTHING non-video-game-related as he was about his maiden trip to Hibachi. Taking a cue from our trusted confidant, we joined him on his second trip to the restaurant.
All it took was that trip for it to replace Dennys as our most-visited dining locale.
Despite having more expensive prices and, well, a closing time, Hibachi managed to win over the hearts and stomachs of my friends and I. We made the switch not only because Hibachi’s fried rice, chicken, and even iced tea surpassed all taste tests with flying colors, but also because of how the food is prepared. At Hibachi, guests are seated on three sides of a rectangular table that has an actual stainless steel grill built into it, taking up the fourth side. The grill is used by a Hibachi chef, who actually prepares everyone’s order RIGHT THERE AT THE TABLE. This was quite a switch from Dennys, when we could have passed the time between ordering our food and actually receiving our food by doing something such as, I don’t know, constructing a skyscraper. You know how, when food is taking too long to prepare, people always believe they are witty by saying “are they still killing the cow back there?”
In Dennys’ case, the cow hasn’t even been BORN yet.
Hibachi patrons get to see raw ingredients turn into edible delicacies approximately two feet in front of them at the hands of a very trained cook. It is all kicked off with a towering wall of flame to get the grill ready for cooking. This made for the following entertaining (to me) exchange with my friend Nikki on her own maiden trip.
ME: Uh oh, are you wearing hairspray?
NIKKI: Yeah, why?
COOK: (Lights the grill with a flame taller than Mt. Everest)
NIKKI: (Jumps back in terror so far she lands in Dennys)
Once the grill is hot, the chef proceeds to cook the meal via a series of elaborately-performed maneuvers that are not commonly seen outside of martial arts flicks. Eggs are tossed and broken on the side of a spatula IN MIDAIR. I have trouble breaking an egg on an even surface. Huge piles of rice, vegetables, and meats are continually–and evenly–flipped with the spatula and a fork ONLY. They even manage to make ONIONS entertaining, with raw onion rings of placed on top of each other and then doused in flame, creating Hibachi’s signature “Onion Volcano.” Even though I like onions about as much as Donald Trump likes cohesive sentence structure, I have to admit that I find the Onion Volcano much more entertaining than ANYTHING we ever witnessed at Dennys…and this even includes the time we saw a bloody fistfight take place in the dining room.
Among other Hibachi memories over the years:
–The chef spilling a platter of shrimp onto the grill with the cry “Holy Shrimp!”
–The chef flipping an egg into his tall chef’s hat and remarking, “Where did it go?”
–The chef tossing the spatula in the air and, upon failing to catch it, remarking, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
–That time when, as we waited to be seated, a patron was wheeled out of the restaurant on a stretcher, followed by very concerned family members. Glancing into the dining room, our friend Bruce remarked “Hey, a table opened up!”
–The day when my friends Jon and Shelly and I visited the place about an hour before they closed for the night. We were the only three people at the table, probably in the entire shopping center, and the chef STILL did the full “show” for us.
As we got older and discovered that post-20s life does not afford you opportunities to eat out with your friends 8 nights a week (or much of anything else, really), our trips to Hibachi became less frequent. Our trips to Dennys became MUCH less frequent. The closure of several area Hibachi AND Dennys restaurants could very well be blamed on us getting older.
Completely eliminating the wonder (and worry) over what the hell is going on with our food in the kitchen, it is safe to say that this and many other reasons will cause us to continually dine at this fine non-Dennys business forever. Or at least until the fried rice loses its taste in six years.
