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The Sporkful

Why Hibachi Gets Complicated

The Sporkful

SiriusXM Podcasts

Arts

4.63.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1964 Rocky Aoki, a Japanese immigrant, created hibachi restaurants in America when he opened his first Benihana. Rocky later said that he based his concept on the idea that "Americans enjoy eating in exotic surroundings, but are deeply mistrustful of exotic foods.” The restaurant took off, but Rocky's legacy is complicated.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Now, let's see what, the egg now, right? Scrambled egg, okay.

0:07.0

I think I got some shells in there.

0:12.0

I'm at Benny Hanna's flagship restaurant in Manhattan living a dream of mine to be a

0:17.0

Habachi chef and my teacher is the executive chef of Bennyhana Tony Nemoto

0:21.8

Tony's been cooking Habachi for 40 years.

0:25.0

You want to move quickly so the egg doesn't burn.

0:28.0

Got it.

0:29.0

You want to keep the yellow egg color.

0:31.0

Right, all right.

0:32.0

Let's make some noise here too.

0:34.0

I didn't get to try any tricks that day, but of course the tricks are a big part of

0:38.2

Habachi.

0:39.2

Bouncing the raw egg on the spatula, flipping shrimp tails into your chef's hat, and the onion volcano.

0:45.6

That's when the chef builds a tower of onion slices, fills them with oil, and lights the whole

0:49.8

thing on fire.

0:51.6

In lieu of real tricks, I did my best to imitate the more

0:54.5

percussive elements of Habachi. All right, chicken. This is the sound

1:01.1

of mixing chicken.

1:10.0

Oh, see, but then I got over to zealous and I just sprayed onions everywhere. All right, that's okay though.

1:11.0

It's a show all right what I learned is I worked with

1:16.4

Chef Tony is that when you go to a Habachi restaurant watch the chef cook

1:20.4

there is so much more going on than I ever realized.

...

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