Monday, November 29, 2004

Shell Shocked

Mrs. Mosley and I went out to a new Japanese Steakhouse on Saturday night to see how good it was. The service was a bit on the slow side even for a Saturday night, but the food was very good. We both really enjoy a good Japanese Steakhouse.

The last time we went to one was in August for Mrs. Mosley's birthday. On that evening, we had the bad luck to get a new chef instead of one of the veterans. As a result, his tricks were not as polished as the others. This started off with his inability to hit half of the plates with the shrimp tails, much to the dismay to the two women beside us. He also accidentally mixed up the orders and was putting servings on the wrong plates. But the biggest mistake was during his bouncing/spinning egg trick that he accidentally bounced it...towards Mrs. Mosley.

Props should be given to her on two counts: First, her reflexes are quite good as she immediately reared backwards and managed to get egg only on her skirt. Second, she was incredibly good natured about the whole thing. The end result of the evening was that we got some of our money back, but not all, for the cost of drycleaning and inconvenience (the drycleaner was unable to get the egg out, but he also put holes in one of my shirts so we were getting our fill of incompetence that week).

Ruined dress aside, we went into the new place with some trepidation. We sat down and watched the cook go through his routine and we both noticeably tensed when he whipped out the eggs. Mrs. Mosley's back went rigid and she swayed back and forth as he swung the egg in front of her. This white, centrifugal projectile seemed on the verge of shooting off of the spatula and straight for her forehead. In the end, this cook was more practiced than our last one and we enjoyed our meal, sans yolk splatter.

There are times when we wish we could have the food without (1) the showboating of chefs and (2) the unease of sitting with total strangers. I would add a third reason to this in lieu of our August dinner, but I'll just remain hopeful that our future chefs are not lacking in depth perception.

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