Consider the term buffet. All right, now that your twisted little minds are duly considering, what images come to mind? I know, I know (I hear you cry), a bunch of overage, overweight people drearily forming a queue and duly shuffling from one steam table to the next, piling up heaping platefuls of mediocre cuisine? That's what comes to mind, right? Well then, consider the term cooking station. Ah, now the clouds are rolling back like so much English fog and the sun appears cheerful and bright. Cooking station! A smart, young chef du jour in a snow-white toque asking you if you like more or less garlic while he grills your meat and veggies to perfection. Considering? Yeah, man, and I can dig it! Well, campers, that's exactly what my lovely bride the Rock Star and I discovered on two separate visits to Tokyo One Sushi and Grill, located at the nexus of Midway and Belt Line in the fair city of Addison, state of TX.
ATMOSPHERE
When you are led by your smiling hostess past the charmingly smallish waiting area and into Action Central, you know right away that you are in for a treat. A veritable army of chefs is hard at work creating your Asian delights. Over here, sashimi is sliced with knifelike precision before being deposited correctly onto the buffet. Over there, a hibachi Iron Chef stands ready to assist the most discriminating of palates, while just a couple of feet away stands a tempura bin which is in a constant state of replenishment. In short, the place is busier than a beehive at honeytime, and you merely have to move from one station to the next to select all the essentials needed to compose your gastronomic symphony.
FOOD
In a word: freshness. Raw oysters slathered in cocktail sauce slid happily down my gullet, precisely as my dear father The Daddy taught me how to eat them at Broussards Restaurant a score of years ago. Hibachi steak, grilled precisely medium-rare as requested, fought furiously with zucchini and garlic and won the day handily. Spicy tuna, yellowtail, and red snapper sashimi thrilled me with their utterly perfect simplicity. My lovely bride raves to this day over her eel roll, seared Ahi tuna, and beef kabob, while her sister the Wild Thing waxes rhapsodic over the seemingly endless varieties of tofu (and trust Czar on this one, tofu is not commonly a thing to sing about; it is akin to attending the best luau on Maui and raving about the poi), not to mention the fact that Beaners the Nonstop Niece just adored the crab legs, carefully cracking them like so many eggs before dousing them liberally with butter and other goodies. In sum, we all made quite the meal and then some, and finished off our repasts quite nicely, thank you, with delightful scoops of Mango and Green Tea ice cream.
SERVICE
Our delightful waitress (I am truly sorry I cannot share her name, as I have temporarily mislaid the restaurant's receipt which carries that information, a tactic I often use instead of a notepad which I find tends to get in the way) was the very picture of charming efficiency on both occasions, deftly dealing with us and several other tables as well (this is often the case with waitstaff; trust me, it is not a task for the faint of heart) and properly checking with us to see if were indeed finished before briskly whisking each plate off to Dishwasherland. No website, please call 972 386-8899 with any questions. Oh, and one thing more, I distincly recall my significant other telling me that dinner rather than lunch is much the better time to enjoy Tokyo One, as the offerings are much more complete.
OVERALL
I have little more at this juncture to add, except for the fact that Tokyo One Sushi and Grill is indeed a true culinary outpost of the Land of the Rising Sun. Celebrate their reinvention of the buffet soon, and remember:
LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR MEDIOCRE FOOD!!!
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