Photo: B.A. Nilsson

Dinner and a Show

A well-traveled friend assures me that the combination of high-tech and old tradition mingled in the restaurant Koto would not be completely out of place in downtown Tokyo, although it might seem terribly old-fashioned because there’s not quite enough of the high-tech end of things. “You’ve got to stop thinking of Japan as something quiet and quaint,” he insists.

My antiquated image derives mostly from cookbooks that stress the simplicity of both the food preparation and the proper setting. Nowhere in my collection is teppanyaki mentioned, that compelling fusion of theater and grillwork that has popped up all over the Capital Region in recent years, augmenting what once was the singular province of Hiro on Central Avenue.

Koto occupies the spot once held by Peony and the Silver Pavilion, although the place has been so extensively refurbished that it looks nothing like its predecessors. The vertical fountain of a pebbled wall that greets you at the doorway, the word Koto inset with contrasting rocks, suggests something of the whimsy of old Japan, but an oversized flat-screen TV blaring from behind the sushi bar brings you back to the current century.

The tourist experience prevails if you’re lucky enough to share a teppanyaki table with another party. My daughter and I were placed with a birthday-partying party of seven who approached the experience with a certain amount of uncertainty, although I give them credit for choosing this venue in the first place, especially as the birthday child was young enough to prefer a place with only primary colors in the decor.

Once the dinner gets started, it’s theater, of course, a well-worn formula practiced with skillful insouciance by our tableside chef, Peter, who whizzed his spatulas into blurry motion, danced eggs from a spatula to his high-topped hat and chopped our sizzling ingredients with great precision at fantastic speeds.

The resulting dinners are never less than delicious (you pay from $14 to $20, more if you want lobster or filet mignon), but they’re so rich with butter and soy sauce that it’s not surprising. With soup, salad (topped with a ginger-citrus dressing) and a few grilled shrimp to get you started, it’s a lot to try to eat.

Although the front room of the restaurant is dominated by those teppanyaki tables, there is plenty of room for simpler dining, as we learned when we stopped by on a busy holiday-season evening. The place seemed jammed full, but we were led well into the back where a few empty tables awaited.

Even there, you can order full meals of the tempura and teriyaki selections, with soup and salad as the additional courses. Tempura is deep-fried food that doesn’t seem deep fried because the batter is light and the frying is done quickly enough and at the right temperature to prevent too much oil from collecting in the crust. Shrimp and vegetable tempura ($15) proved the artistry of this venture, with a generous array of ingredients fanned across a decorative plate.

Teriyaki refers to a marinade that gives a puckery tang to whatever is cooked with it, in this case the usual components of sirloin, shrimp and chicken along with salmon, eel or mixed seafood and even tofu, priced from $11 to $22.

The best deal is the bento special. The name refers both to a type of meal typically eaten while traveling and to a black lacquered box in which it’s carried. At Koto, the meal is $17 for your choice of tofu, chicken, steak or seafood, with teriyaki and tempura versions available. Rice, salad, a California roll and a few steamed dumplings accompany your selection, although the dumplings threatened to steal the show, so finely crafted and tasty are they.

If you don’t mind that large television dominating your field of vision—and who (besides me) does in this day and age?—the sushi bar offers another dining option, where you can enjoy seeing your meal prepared (if the TV isn’t too distracting). A selection of sushi-based dinners offers soup or salad with the meal and slightly more generous (for sushi, at least) pricing.

We sampled the sushi during both of our visits, and can report great satisfaction with the spicy tuna roll ($6) as well as the Alaskan roll ($7), an oversized compote of salmon, putative crabmeat, avocado and cucumber. These are served on attractive rectangular plates with the usual accompaniments.

I like the teppanyaki show and enjoy a good serving of sushi, but nothing tops a fine bowl of noodle soup. Priced from $12 to $20, they feature a range of components (lobster tends to make things costly), but the $14 nabeyaki udon also got me a few sticks of shrimp tempura alongside a large serving of delicious broth with chicken, egg and vegetables swimming with the thick, slurpy noodles.

My only reservation about this restaurant is the corporate feel about it. It turns out to be part of a small family of such restaurants dotted about the Northeast, which makes it unsurprising that there’s a cookie-cutter feel about the design and the service. You’re typically under the care of one server, which makes it tough to get a check when the place is hopping. Several management types seemed to be less than fully occupied when I was studying the place—it would be nice to see more cooperative activity on the floor.

But careful (and costly) refurbishment has made this an attractive destination, certainly worth a shot when you want your steak served a little differently.

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