Kotas Reviews Mikata Japanese Grill

Well, the dog days of summer are upon us. For Pokemon Go players, they are probably more like the Pidgey days of summer, but the point still stands: It's damn hot out there, and it isn't cooling off any time soon. So, what is an intrepid young (ha!) reviewer to do to beat the heat? Why, go to a Hibachi Grill of course! Today we review Mikata Japanese Grill.

Angled because I'm either artistic or lazy. 

Mikata Japanese Grill is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in a little strip mall type place that you really wouldn't think has any restaurants in it, but in fact has more than one. It's a sort of hole in the wall style place, but the chairs are padded and comfy, the decor is...there, and the service, at least when I went there, is fast. This particular trip was with about a dozen co-workers in celebration of "August Birthdays", as is our tradition. I'd never been to this particular restaurant, and let's face it, they badgered me to review it. So here we are.

What we refer to as hibachi style cuisine in North America is actually teppanyaki, and originated in 1945 when an enterprising Japanese restaurant chain called Misono introduced the idea of cooking Western-influenced food on a Japanese teppan, or iron griddle. They also provided a little show with the meal, introducing the various food tricks, such as the ever popular onion slice volcano and the egg catch. They style was popular with visitors and most famously imported to the United States via the Benihana restaurant chain in 1964. Neat, eh? Let's get to the food.

Like all right thinking people I got the "chicken entree with fried rice" because I'm not a savage who gets steamed rice. I honestly had no idea what to expect, though I suspected it to be a form of chicken teriyaki. The menu also had small variety of sushi rolls available, but I was warned that the entree is a "metric ton of food", and avoided ordering too much. Or so I thought. Now, unlike what most people think of when they think teppanyaki, there wasn't a table we sat around to see the food cooked in an entertaining manner, but ya know what? That was fine. Let's get to the food.

Would you believe this was after I'd eaten about a quarter of the food?

Dear lord the portion sizes here are ENORMOUS. You get fried rice, chicken teriyaki, a heap of "standard teppanyaki vegetables", and some fried noodles, in case you didn't get enough carbs in your rice. What I should have done was divide the meal in half, save one half for later and had a decent meal. What I did instead was eat all of it, because it was very tasty, and then regret my life decisions. It was not the absolute finest food I have ever consumed at a teppanyaki grill, but it was far and away the best food I'd consumed at that price. $8 for an easy two meals worth of food that I had a hard time not eating? Yes please.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets 2 smiley faces. Tasty, inexpensive, and filling, you really can't ask much more of a teppanyaki restaurant. Sure, we didn't get the traditional show with our meal, but who cares? I ate two lunches in a row for $8! The Value is Real, and the Flavor is Good. If you are in the Oak Ridge area, do try and stop in. You won't regret it.

Kotas Reviews the Green Tea Kit Kat Bar

Now that our patriotic duties are over, it's time to get back down to business. The business of reviewing things from both far and near. Today's subject is from "far", and was made possible by the extremely generous donation of my awesome friend [REDACTED]! This one's for you! By the way, it's from Japan! Let's dig into the Green Tea Kit Kat Bar.

私は休憩を与えます

Green Tea is one of those flavors that the Japanese love in damn near any product, and that hasn't really caught on here in the States. Mostly because green tea isn't our drink of choice. No, we get coffee flavored everything out the wazoo in Eagleland, don't we? God Bless America.

Anyway, I do enjoy Kit Kats quite a bit. My preferred Halloween candy bar as a child, I have always been partial to chocolate covered wafer cookies, and the Kit Kat is the literal Alpha and Omega of this treat on our candy shelves. There are a few variants available in the States (Dark Chocolate, White Chocolate, and uh...Big), but there is a truly bewildering number of variants sold in other countries. Mostly this is because everywhere else it is manufactured by Nestle, but in the good ol' United States, our boy Hershey has all the rights, and Hershey's isn't exactly known for changing things for change's sake. The Kit Kat bar originated with Rowentree in Britain before it was snapped up by Nestle, because of course it did. But hey, we're not here to discuss history, but the here and now! Here.

Truly the embodiment of sophistication and delight. 

It is very green, that is for sure. With flecks of...something in the coating. Maybe it is meant to be fragments of tea leaves? No idea. Otherwise, it's a typical Kit Kat, with a candy coating probably based in white chocolate rather than the traditional dark, and holding all or almost all of the flavorings. It looks exactly as you'd expect, really. Let's take a nibble, shall we?

That is definitely Great Teaness right in your face, that is. I doubly appreciate the fact that the sugar wafer inside is ALSO tinted green. Nice job Nestle, staying on theme. The coating is, as expected, a flavored white chocolate and while I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate in general, I recognize that it is an excellent vehicle for non-traditional flavorings, a role it performs admirably here. Still, it's not like "Green Tea" is a particularly bold flavor. Just a weird (to me) one.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets a smiley face. It is certainly not my favorite flavor of candy (or, well, anything really), but it absolutely lives up to the promise of as much Green Teaness as you can cram into a single candy while still holding true to the nature of that candy. If you love green tea, shove one in your face hole as soon as you can, but for the rest of us it is but a pleasant novelty best enjoyed in small portions over a long period of time. Also, Green Teaness. SOPHISTICATED YA'LL.