Teppanyaki Grill and Buffet: Ordinary Asian, But Done Well.

I went to Teppanyaki Grill & Buffet in the Cherry Tree Shopping Center (a really BIG strip mall) for lunch with about 12 colleagues.  There seem to be two basic forms of Asian buffets- one which feels like it was built in Shanghai in the 1940's and hasn't been updated since, and the other a streamlined-looking modern cafeteria with Asian-style furniture and a few other Far-East decor items.  Teppanyaki is one of the latter, with thick carpet, colorful blue and pink indirect lighting, and drop-spotlights giving it quite a pleasant atmosphere. It's one of those where a waiter or waitress takes your drink order and then you go get your own food, and man was there ever a lot of food: all sorts of Asian dishes as well as a whole steam table of American-style food for the xenophobes who get dragged there by their more adventurous spouses/family/friends.  It even has pepperoni pizzas. I hope I don't sound racist by telling you that our waitress was a teenaged little Asian girl with her hair worn so that a long strand fell on either side of her face, resembling the heroine of every anime film I've ever seen (which ain't many).  Memory was not her superpower, though, because she had to ask me twice what drink I'd ordered and then still brought me sweet tea instead of unsweet.  She was so polite, though, that I didn't have the heart to try to correct her again, and used it as an excuse to enjoy the guilty pleasure that is Sweet Tea....

I was a little disappointed in the more common Asian dishes.  The General Tso's Chicken was sweet and had very little heat to it, and the peppery chicken and shrimp likewise were not very peppery. A notable exception was the hibachi chicken, which was not spicy but had a delicious smoky flavor.  They do, however, have an impressive array of seafood that to me was better than most other Asian buffets.  There was baked fish, fried fish, salmon, cold mussels on the half-shell pre-dabbled with a sweet pepper sauce, steamed mussels on the half-shell, and baby clams on the half-shell, to name but a few.  I'm told they have a Mongolian-style grill to order bar in the back, too, but I didn't see that and had already loaded my plate(s), but I'll have to try that sometime.

UPDATE, 07/14/2014 (Sort of)- Went to the Teppanyaki at 38th/Moller Road, and the food was completely different from the one in Cherry Tree Plaza.  It wasn't bad, really, but everything tasted strange to me, even the staples like General Tso's Chicken-- it was vaguely sweet with almost NO heat, quite unlike the General Tso's  I'm used to, and, sadly, not to my liking.  I'll stick with the Cherry Tree one....