Dinner and a Show

Today was Father’s Day, and we took the whole family out for a teppan yaki lupper.  If you don’t know what “lupper” is, it’s a meal about halfway between lunch and supper, in the same way that “brunch” is halfway between breakfast and lunch.  Of course, according to the terminology I was raised with, “lupper” is still dinner, despite the odd timing, because “dinner” means “the biggest meal of the day, no matter what time you eat it.” But that’s a technicality.

If you don’t know what “teppan yaki” is, it’s the Japanese cuisine where they cook on the table (which is apparently called a “teppan,” although most of us Americans just say “hibachi”).  Where I’m from (the DC-VA-NC East Coast corridor), we typically just called it ”Benihana,” because that was the only such place there was.  Well, at least that’s the way it was when I was growing up, which admittedly was a long time ago.

But, here in Southern California (and/or here in the aftertimes), we had a whole bunch of options, of which Benihana was only one (and not even the best one, apparently).  We went with a place called Musashi, which, going by their website, used to have 3 locations, but is now down to just one (the pandemic was not kind to most restaurants, but for teppanyaki restaurants in particular—where more than half the point is the showmanship of the meal preparation, so take-out isn’t as enticing—I’m guessing it was devastating).  Anyway, Musashi has been around since 1981, which is one of those years that seems ancient to my children but doesn’t seem that long ago to me.  But, it was 42 years ago, which is at least long ago enough that it seems like these folks know what they’re doing.  So, I don’t really want to tell you how much it cost us, but the food was excellent, and the kids seemed to enjoy the show (and, honestly, that was the main reason I wanted to go).  So I call it a success.

Next time, a longer post, assuming all goes well.