Beware of Flying Shrimp

Okay, okay, I promise this is my last post about what I ate while in Texas, but whenever I eat out at a restaurant, I seem to notice everything and then I have to fucking taking notes about it and turn it into a blog posting. On one of the nights that I was in my parent’s small south Texas town, they wanted to take the whole family out to dinner. I so rarely go back to that town that when I do make it home, it’s like a huge deal. I drop kicked my citizenship there as soon as I was out of high school and never looked back.

So my parents took the whole kit and caboodle gang out to dinner making us a party of eleven. Since it would all be on one check, I didn’t get the heebie jeebies about it and decided to just enjoy the ride. We went to this place called Tokyo Grill. It’s one of those Benihana kinda places where you sit around the grill and the chef does tricks and throws skrimps at your mouth and shit. I went in with a bit of hesitancy but I must admit it was really fun. The two Cosmos may or may not have helped with that. When we first got there, it was colder than Ann Coulter’s tit but once they fired up the grill it was much better. Our waitress was a real authentic Asian person right down to the kimono she was wearing and the chopsticks she had in her hair. This place was the real deal. I ordered some grilled skrimps and chicken thing and was happy that it came with a salad. Salad and veggies seem in short supply in Texas so I was ready to eat some leafy greens. I had my choice of two authentically delicious Japanese dressings: ginger and ranch. Ranch? What the fuck? Seriously, a Texan can’t go for five minutes without putting ranch dressing on something. (Full disclosure: I love it on pizza.) The restaurant probably opened with only the ginger dressing but after about two days, the townspeople showed up with fire and pitchforks demanding ranch fucking dressing. The salad came out and I can only assume it was the same salad that all Japanese have with their meals. Iceberg lettuce. This is is when I ordered Cosmo number two.

By this time, our chef came out and started cooking the food. He did all the neat-o tricks like making the rice into the shape of Mickey Mouse and then making it into a volcano that spewed steam. He made eggs spin around and acted like he was going to drop it on my Grandma. At one point he made the pieces of chicken breast run around the grill as if the chicken was still alive and running from the heat. My vegetarian niece did not find that amusing at all. I, on the other hand, was very amused that she was not amused. Then came the moment I was waiting for. He was going to start throwing skrimps all up in our direction so we could catch them in our mouths. Suffice it to say that I caught all three of mine because I have plenty of experience getting things into my mouth. My mom, however, failed miserably at the task and three skrimps fell to the ground for some sad bus boy to pick up. Luckily no one was injured by the flying skrimps. I read in the the New York Times of a family that was suing Benihana’s because a chef threw a skrimp, the man jerked his head to avoid it, hurt himself, weeks later had surgery and then got some infection and died ten months later. And they tried to blame the skrimp? Sad story, but about the family of the skrimp? How horrifying for them to see their one and only skrimp child oiled and grilled and then thrown across a room into the waiting mouth a hungry human. What an awful way to die.

Anyhoo, the whole Tokyo Grill thing was fun. I had some good family time, some good food and best of all I got to watch as three skrimps hit my mother right in the face as she struggled to get them into her mouth. Priceless.

And the only reason I say skrimps is because it makes me laugh when other people say it.
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