Roppongi with Rem: Part 2

We all sit down at this counter, and there’s a chef wearing one of those cool tall white hats cooking on a “benihana” style grill. We sit down and order beers make by the restaurant, right there in Roppongi. The chef begins cooking us food on this stainless-steel grill and I realize that the last thing I ate was a cup-noodle about 7 hours before, and I was getting pretty hungry.

We received a few “warm up” courses including soup, and a salmon and avocado “tower” that was very good. Then they brought out the Japanese stuff. He brings out a platter with two delicious looking pieces of fish, which he dips in batter and begins to fry right before us. Then he takes the two shrimp that are there, each about 4 inches long, and throws them on the grill. Immediately their legs start kicking, scaring the crap out of me. I obviously didn’t realize they were still alive, but as I looked over, Mr. Benihana was flipping them onto their backs and their legs were still kicking. At this point I must have made a face because Rem goes, “You have to watch this is sooooo cool”. I look over and catch with the corner of my eye, the chef ripping their shells off with his knife. At this point I’m praying the little guys are dead, but those damn legs keep kicking.

He mercifully cuts off their heads, and begins to butterfly them. He takes the shells and the part with all their legs and presses the crispy pile into the grill with his spatula. He goes back to the shrimp, which now look more like the shrimp you eat and not like the animal and flips them around for a little bit. When he’s all done, he puts the pieces of shrimp next to the fried fish, and serves them to us. The legs and shells he had been mashing were pounded into the outline of two little crabs—this is so hard to explain, but the mashed exoskeleton looked like a paper crab now, and he put the shrimp heads, eyeballs intact on top. We were supposed to eat these “crabs” like crackers. I tried it, and because it had soaked up all the oil and butter from the grill, it tasted fine. The fish and shrimp meat were delicious.

Finally, after a few more courses, they served us the fillet of beef. Mr. Benihana took these beautiful fillets and grilled them perfectly right in front of us. This was really a completely awesome experience, and I have Rem and his aunt to thank. The food was amazing, and during the meal we had wine, in addition to the microbrew.

But for Rem and I, our night was just beginning.