Different styles of Teppanyaki

Teppanyaki has evolved through the many years that it is been in the western culture. It was first popularised by Rocky Aoki in New York in the 60s. He started the very successful Benihana chain and devised a business model which emphasised a high turnover of clients. It started by having people sit in the bar having drinks until the session started. Then they will lead into the room and an entertainment show was performed. This would typically last about an hour. After that People were ushered into a separate room where they could sit on comfy couches and have their dessert. This still sometimes happens in Perth although to the Australian culture it is a bit odd and some people object to this. But it was started over 50 years ago. By the way Rocky Aoki is the father of very famous DJ Steve Aoki who is the worlds highest paid DJ. There is a very touching film on Netflix about him and his life called “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. We highly recommend people to watch this. It has a bit about early teppanyaki in it.

The main reason for success in this Teppanyaki style eating which you don’t see very much in Perth is that each entertainment session would take an hour so it would be possible to get three sessions for each Teppanyaki station. This made such benches extremely profitable.

One of the other major achievements that Rocky made is that he turned the simple act of cooking basically food stuffs on a barbecue into a theatrical experience. This was not done before actually. If you have a look at Teppanyaki in Japan it is completely different. Also it wasn’t called Teppanyaki per se but it was called hibachi and a lot of the places. A show was devised where the viewers of the dining experience were treated to not only cooking on the Teppanyaki grill but a series of tricks if you want to call it that. 

These tricks were made up of a few basic ones which we will go into in the next blog entry. 

Until then, if you want to have teppanyaki in Perth for a birthday or any special occasion please come to us at Tsunami Ko Teppanyaki.