Teppanyaki
Today was my last day in Fresno. Tomorrow I hop on a plane and go back to H-town. I slept the morning away and spent my afternoon packing. Outside it was pouring rain and freezing cold. Conditioning us for going back to MA, I guess. Tonite, Lupe took us out to dinner. We went to Yoshino for Teppanyaki. Yoshino is a Japanese restaurant and teppanyaki is a dinner event where you sit around a grill and watch the chef cook your food while he entertains you. Being a Firday nite, Yoshino was slightly busy so we had to wait a few minutes. So we headed over to the bar for a few drinks. Since we were in an Asian restaurant, we went with Asian beer. Lupe recommended Sapporo, so we all had one. Have to say we were surprised when we were brought our beers. The bottles were huge, def larger than normal. It turned out they were 20oz bottles. Lupe decided we should start dinner off with some sushi so we had California rolls, salmon, and yellowfin tuna. There wasn't enough for each of us to have some of each, so I had the California roll and salmon. Didn't really care for the CA roll because the cucumber in there threw off the flavor for me. Liked the salmon though. Then they brought us some miso soup and a salad. The salad wasn't very good and it was topped off with 1000 island dressing. Finally, the chef came out with his cart of raw meat. To start off, he puts on a little fire show. It actually serves to pre-clean the grill, but it was still cool to watch. He starts off and cooks up some rice to go with your dish. Then he grills up some other vegetables including onions. But he leaves the onions as whole slices. We then separates the individual rings and stacks them on top of each other making a volcano. Then he pours sake in the middle of the volcano and it erupts with smoke and flame. Very neat idea. Finally, he gets to cooking the meat. Starts off cooking some shrimp and gives everybody some as a free appetizer. Twice in a row got a free appetizer. I went with filet mignon and thoroughly enjoyed my meal. Because we were eating, we ordered another round of Sapporos. We had quite a bit of beer; turned out to be 100oz split 3 ways. Dinner turned out being around $120. That means my last 2 dinner events cost around $450-500 for a total of 8 people. The best part about it was I got to enjoy these expensive dinners with friends and for free.