menuplease

The term “Mongolian barbecue” was first used by Chinese actor Wu Jau-nan when he opened a restaurant in Taipei in 1951. In “Unmentionable Cuisine,” the late Calvin Schwabe described Mongolian barbecue as being Taiwanese and similar to certain cookery from Korea (bul-gogi) and Japan (teppanyaki and jingisukan). The “legend” about Genghis Khan’s soldiers cooking their meals on their shields or helmets are amusing, but Femme de Joie finds it unlikely that entire armies would be sent out on lengthy campaigns with no thought to who was going to feed all those men and instead decide that they should just rustle up some grub on their own.

The building at 2151 Market Street in Redding has been a Bermuda Triangle of bars and restaurants, some good (River City Bar & Grill), some bad (a bar M. de Joie visited long ago to hear an astonishingly loud and spectacularly awful band; she has forgotten both the name of the bar and the band), and the neither here nor there (Zippers, Rainbow Lounge, Eddy’s Grill, et al). To stretch a metaphor beyond all reason, businesses in that spot became a Flying Dutchman of doom. Femme de Joie thinks this may be because the location is apparently invisible; when she tries to describe it to someone (“South of Jiffy Lube. Kind of across from Mallory’s Florist”), the response is invariably furrowed brows and puzzled expressions.

Succeeding where its predecessors have failed is Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ. Though kahuna is a Hawaiian word and Mongolian is, well, Mongolian, the name seems appropriate for a Pan-Asian restaurant concept. It’s been packing them in for over a year and is one of the few downtown restaurants open every day for both lunch and dinner.

The interior has a tiki-bar kind of feel with a lot of fake orchids and wood paneling. When a customer is seated, waitstaff asks if they have ever been there before. If this is the first visit, the procedure is explained and your order for white or brown rice is taken. Ramps and steps lead customers down to salad bar tables filled with a selection of thinly sliced meats, raw shrimp, parboiled noodles, vegetables, tofu, and eggs.

Diners fill a bowl with their choice of ingredients and then move to a sauce bar, where they choose as many sauces as they like (Thai chili sauce, beer, garlic oil, teriyaki ,and so forth) to ladle over the filled bowls. Just to the left of the sauce bar is a shelf with shakers of seasonings (thyme, chipotle, sesame oil, lime juice, etc.). Moving to the left is an open window to the grill itself, a small selection of last-minute additions (peanuts, coconut, sesame seeds) to toss onto the now-brimming bowl before handing off the food to one of the cooks.

The cooks do a sort of ballet around the grill, maneuvering the food with a long pair of “swords.” When it’s cooked, the food is slid off the grill into a fresh bowl and handed back to the diner.

There is a certain sameness to what all the food looks like when it’s come off the grill, a sort of swirly brownness. The end result is really up to the diner and their wise (or not) choice of ingredients and sauces. It might be tempting, for instance, to load the bowl entirely with shrimp, and some people probably do that, but it’s more fun and interesting to combine a variety of vegetables and meat with different sauces. In theory you could eat at Kahuna several times a week and never have the same flavors, textures, or ingredients repeated.

Since Asian food is chockablock with allergens – soy, peanuts, gluten – a sign says that if you tell the cooks about your sensitivity they will clean the grill before cooking your food. Femme de Joie did not witness this happening on her visits so she cannot say exactly how they clean the grill – whether that means only scraping the top of all detritus or actually scrubbing the surface to remove trace amounts. This may seem frivolous to non-allergy sufferers, but a person with a peanut allergy could die if they ate a meal cooked on the same grill that previously had peanuts on it – so ask, ask, ask.

But there are a couple of things newbie diners ought to be aware of. From Kahuna’s website:

Lunch includes one bowl of stir-fry and rice, $10.99 (you may take your leftovers home).

Dinner is TWO times through buffet line maximum, including our steamed white rice, and flour tortillas $14.99 (If you do not finish your first bowl you make take that home, but if you do get a second there will be no to go boxes

Seniors (65 and older) and children (5-10) – Lunch $10.49 – Dinner $12.99 (same as Dinner explanation)

So if Femme de Joie understand this correctly: you may buy dinner for $14.99, for which you are entitled to two trips through the buffet line. If you do not finish your second bowl of food – which you own, since the understood contract between a diner and a restaurant is that the customer pays for their food – you cannot keep it. The restaurant will throw your food away. Bad customer! At lunch, it turns out, you get one trip through the buffet line BUT (what the website does not tell you) is that if you want shrimp or lamb (which are included on the dinner buffet), that is $3.00 extra – making the lunch buffet cost as much as dinner, but you get half as much.

Femme de Joie must be missing something here. Such a policy can only result in arguments between customers and waitstaff, who will suffer the brunt of righteous anger, and waste of perfectly good food. However, the website does not say that a customer cannot place the leftover food in their own to-go box (which are available in bulk at Cash and Carry) or a piece of aluminum foil, thoughtfully folded and tucked into a pocket before entering the restaurant. And really: $12.99 for a five-year-old’s dinner? If management is afraid of grifter children and seniors defrauding them left and right, perhaps a look at “small” meal option is in order.

Other than that, Femme de Joie likes Kahuna’s. It’s rather fun, you know exactly what you’re getting, and staff is friendly and helpful (though they do tend to disappear after they’ve delivered your drink and rice). It does get crowded with long lines, so visiting before or after peak dining hours is suggested.

Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ, 2151 Market Street, Redding, CA 96001. 530-244-4200. Open daily, 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Cash and cards. Beer, wine, low-alcohol cocktails. Vegan and vegetarian options. Gluten-free and other special diets accommodated (but ask about how the grill is cleaned). Parking lot. Outdoor seating available. Website at http://kahunasmongolianbbq.com/

To look at the impressive faux-Italianate façade on the new restaurant at the corner of Shasta and Market Streets - the Sherven Square complex - you'd think that, well, a Tuscan restaurant was housed there. There's nothing Asian about the terra-cotta colored exterior and the false shutters on second-story windows. The cheesecake portrait of a - what? Teppanyaki warrior? - on the southwest wall that might be at home on a black velvet canvas. Walk inside and it's, "Toto, we're not in Roma any more."

Clearly a lot of money was poured into the ultra-modern design, though it can't seem to make up its mind as to whether it's industrial chic or ersatz Vegas glitz.

The cocktail bar-cum-sushi bar is sleek with burnished metal counters and minimalist décor and subtle lighting. Femme de Joie recently perched herself at Kobe‘s bar, waiting for an old friend who wanted to go there for her birthday. A glass of Folie a Deux 2004 Zinfandel (Amador County) was a luscious rich treat; too bad that for $7 the pour was rather skimpy.

Seating is available at the sushi bar, at the communal teppanyaki tables, or at smaller tables for ordering items from the kitchen. Birthday Girl wanted teppanyaki, so that is where we sat, along with about six other diners. The idea is to watch the show: the setup is not geared toward conversation, which became evident when M. de Joie - seated next to Birthday Girl - could see B.G.'s lips moving but could only catch about every fourth word she said. It was that noisy.

The procedure for teppanyaki goes thusly: You order your choice of meat or fish - New York steak, chicken, salmon, etc. Soup and salad are brought by waitresses, as you watch the chef go through his schtick to prepare the rest of the meal. Onion soup (miso is also available) was a bit oily and had a few rings of onion in a thin broth accented with soy. In a Tom Waitsian moment, the wasabi-ginger dressing beat up the bowl of iceberg lettuce ... the lettuce just wasn't strong enough to defend itself.

Meanwhile, back at the teppanyaki table: the chef had done a baton routine with spatulas, tossed a raw egg around, and emptied large bowls of cold cooked rice and prepped vegetables onto the grill. He piled up onion rings, poured cooking oil inside the tower, and set it on fire. He flipped bite-sized pieces of vegetable at each diner, none of whom actually caught it in their mouths (it is to be hoped someone versed in the Heimlich maneuver is on staff at all times).

First cooked is the fried rice, which then is scooped up and placed on each diner's plate, followed by grilled assorted vegetables and two shrimp. Then the meat and fish are added to the grill, cooked, seasoned, cut up, and distributed to the diners who ordered them. Two small bowls of sauce are available for dipping, including an addictive lemon-pepper Yum Yum sauce.

Teppanyaki Scallops

The scallops were perfectly cooked, tender, and moist, possibly the best scallops M. de Joie has ever had. The fried rice, when freshly cooked, was delicious, but as it cooled M. de Joie became acutely aware of how salty it was. M. de Joie adores salty foods like Parmesan cheese, anchovies, potato chips, and smoked fish, but the salt added by the chef on top of soy sauce made the rice mega-sodium-heavy. Mixed vegetables were adequate but seemed to be just filling up space on the plate. There was nothing special about them.

We were seated at 5:30 p.m. By 6:30 the show was over, the other diners at our table had departed, and there was a line out Kobe's door. Waitresses were looking pointedly in B.G. and M. de Joie‘s direction. The menu had listed several interesting desserts, such as panna cotta and blackberry sorbet ($6 each) but no one offered us a dessert menu or suggested we move elsewhere to continue dining. The bill - salmon, scallops, two glasses of wine - came to $55, not including tip. And frankly, M. de Joie was not exactly stuffed.

The lines out the door indicated that Kobe is doing something right to bring the crowds in, but whether it will endure once the novelty factor wears off is yet to be seen. For Femme de Joie, dinner at Kobe is the culinary equivalent of a Tom Jones concert. There's lots of shaking and stirring, a whole lotta showboating, renditions of the greatest hits, and then it's all over and we need to clear the theater for the next show. Move along, please. To be sure, it's entertaining, but you're paying for all that showmanship. The food is secondary.

Kobe Steak and Seafood, 1300 Market Street, Redding, 530-244-1440. Open daily. Sushi bar. Lunch and dinner. Reservations recommended. Sake, wine, and beer. Vegetarian and vegan options. Street parking. Cash and credit/debit cards.

Where to Eat in Redding and Shasta County, California

Entries tagged with teppanyaki

Kahuna’s Mongolian BBQ Livens Up Downtown Redding Dining

MENUPLEASE AT KOBE: THE TOM JONES OF RESTAURANTS

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