Dinner in Tokyo Bay

Night before last I stayed home and watched one of my favorite movies, Tora! Tora! Tora!, about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Last night, I dined in Tokyo Bay.

Not the Tokyo Bay where, aboard the USS Missouri, the Japanese signed the documents ending WWII. The Tokyo Bay I visited is an hibachi restaurant just outside the gates of our development here in Florida.

My wife is out of town this week which has freed me to a) watch movies she would never in a million years agree to watch and B) eat whatever I please. Dinner Monday was Stouffer's Chipped Beef. Tuesday I went through the drive-through window at KFC. Wednesday I wolfed down an entire “meat lovers” pizza.

Last night, feeling the need for real food and some company other than our ancient dachshunds who aren't good dinner conversationalists in the first place, I headed for Tokyo Bay as I often do when I’m on my own. My wife hates hibachi but I love it. Not only the food, but the spectacle of it all: watching the chef build mini mountains of sliced onions he douses with brandy then ignites, turning them into volcanoes; the sounds of clanking metal as he quickly and precisely slices/dices veggies and meats just like the chef in the old ginsu knife infomercial; and joining my fellow dinners in applauding as he crack eggs into mounds of fried rice and, using his spatula, tosses the shells over his head and into a basket held behind his back.

When I sat down at the U-shaped communal hibachi table, which holds 20, the only other diners were a couple who said they ran a dental lab down the street. They were nice enough and I acted interested when they informed me most dentists outsource the crowns they install in patients’ mouths to labs in China or India. Mr. Dental Lab said that if I would open my mouth and let him look inside he’d be able to tell if any of my crowns were of the inferior foreign-made variety. I lied and said I don’t have any.

About that time a group of ten well-dressed, attractive women who looked to be in their forties, early fifties tops, sat down at the table. I assumed they were co-workers celebrating a birthday or promotion but turns out they were high school BFFs from Terrano (how natives pronounce Toronto), here for a girls’ week in Florida. They looked young to me but many, I was surprised to learn, were grandmothers. First time I’ve ever found a group of grannies hot -- yet one more sign I'm getting old. They asked me to recommend local restaurants for the rest of their stay and I was happy to oblige.

Dining at Tokyo Bay reminded me of a story from my distant past, an hilarious albeit revolting tale I had enough sense not to tell the dentists or BFFs, who were shelling out $40 a pop for their hibachi dinners (excluding drinks, tax and tip). But it’s so damn funny I wanted to tell someone so you, my dear reader, are the lucky beneficiary.

In the 1980s I worked for a New York agency. One of our clients was a company that imported a pricey and prestigious English gin. The agency regularly entertained clients from the company. Their idea of a fun evening was to start out in a bar where everyone was expected to down six or seven drinks made with the client’s gin, then go out to a swell dinner.

One evening a new assistant account executive joined the group, which was intending to wind up at one of Midtown's finest hibachi restaurants. Fresh out of college, this kid had probably never drank one gin martini, much less the six or seven he had under his belt when he finally staggered into the restaurant and sat down with the clients around the hibachi table, at which point another round was ordered.

If you’ve ever been to an hibachi restaurant, you know the chef fires up the grill to approximately four zillion degrees, hot enough to flash-sear a steak in seconds. Once the chef started cooking, the smell of the food caused this drunk kid to vomit so forcefully his puke landed on the red hot grill, which immediately started bubbling, popping and exploding chunks of vomit not only all over the group at our table but onto diners at neighboring tables.

The entire restaurant – patrons, chefs, busboys, bartenders, hostesses – cleared out in 30 seconds flat.

Nothing that untoward happened last night at Tokyo Bay. Everyone was well behaved. Nobody got drunk. Nobody hurled. I convinced the Canadian ladies they should go out for Hawaiian Fusion tonight and to my favorite Italian bistro the night after. Then I came home and watched another war movie, The Longest Day, about D-Day. 

I’m hoping my children and grandson will someday be proud I have put my tale of the hibachi hurler on the Internet, where it will live forever.

But I somehow doubt it.