Hot plates – teppanyaki restaurants fire up in Singapore

SINGAPORE – Teppanyaki is having a moment in Singapore, with new restaurants – casual and luxe – opening in the last few months.

The big name entering the Singapore market is American brand Benihana, started by powerboat racer and wrestler turned restaurateur Rocky Aoki in 1964 in New York.

His chefs, equal parts cooks and performers, prepare and serve food in front of customers. They wow diners with nifty knife work and pyrotechnics – including a tower of onion rings with fire spewing from the inside, flaming beef and other ingredients, ending with fried rice corralled into a heart shape.

These sorts of theatrics have helped Benihana become the largest operator of teppanyaki restaurants in the United States. Today, it owns 68 teppanyaki restaurants and franchises 11 in the US, Caribbean and Central and South America. Aoki died in 2008 at age 69, and the company is run by investment firm Angelo, Gordon & Co, which bought the brand in 2012.

All attempts to contact Benihana have been met with stony silence, but its Singapore restaurant at Millenia Walk is scheduled to open on Aug 1, according to its Instagram account.

In Singapore, one of the oldest teppanyaki restaurants, Shima at Goodwood Park Hotel, is still in business. It opened in 1980. Teppanyaki was a hot feature in foodcourts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with chefs setting food ablaze in front of customers. Since then and in between, teppanyaki restaurants casual and high end have opened and closed.

In 2023 alone, however, four teppanyaki restaurants have opened in quick succession – Miyoshi by Fat Cow in Sentosa in March, Kagayaki by Ishigaki Yoshida in June, and Kou Teppan last Monday. Express Teppan-yaki, a chain from Taiwan, opened its fifth outlet here in June at Bugis Junction.

Instead of theatrics, these restaurants find other ways to shine – with luxe ingredients and what one restaurant calls “affordable luxury”.

Two teppan better than one

Kou Teppan

Where: B1-134 Great World, 1 Kim Seng Promenade
Tel: 6235-1634 
Open: 11.30am to 3pm and 5.30 to 10pm daily

Diners seated around this restaurant’s two 12-seat teppan counters are witness to plenty of action. At each station, there are two teppan cooktops – the main one and a smaller one that rings around the counter, right in front of guests. Much of the food is cooked at the main teppan, but selected courses are cooked and presented right under the diner’s nose.

Diners can also opt for the 44 seats around tables, with food cooked on the teppan and taken to them.

Lunch, priced at $58++ for six courses, includes appetisers, soup, okonomiyaki, beef or garlic rice and dessert. Main course choices are slow-cooked pork, seasonal fish, a scallop, prawn and fish combination, or, for $10++ more, A4 wagyu.

Additional courses for the $88++ dinner include seasonal Japanese vegetables with sea urchin sauce, and fish cooked in a pouch.

Guests can also order add-ons, including Japanese oysters cooked on the teppan ($12++ for two), and foie gras chawanmushi ($14++). Ingredients are flown in from Japan every week.

The executive chef is 15-year teppanyaki veteran Sawada Ko, 36, who used to head Itoh Dining by Nobu, a teppanyaki restaurant in Hakone that was a collaboration between its owner and celebrity chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa.

Asked if there might be Benihana-style performances, a spokesman says: “Diners seated at the teppanyaki counters can expect to see some flames and action when the food is prepared in front of them. Rather than overt stunts or martial arts, however, our chefs are more focused on showcasing their mastery and precision through the quality of the food that is served.”

Exclusive beef

Kagayaki by Ishigaki Yoshida

Where: 27 Keong Saik Road
Tel: 9017-7631
Open: 5.30 to 8pm and 8.15 to10.30pm (Mondays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays
Info:

kagayaki.sg

   

By her own admission, restaurateur Diah Djojonegoro has been to many teppanyaki restaurants in Japan. But one meal in 2016, at Ishigaki Yoshida in Tokyo, stood out.

“I wasn’t thinking about opening a restaurant in Singapore then, but I found the chef very personable and friendly,” she says. “He’s really into the produce he uses at the restaurant, and explains everything through his wife, who speaks English.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Ms Djojonegoro’s family from Indonesia spent more time in Singapore, and were hankering for the high-end teppanyaki meals they enjoyed in Jakarta. Luxe teppanyaki restaurants proliferate in that capital city, she says. So the idea of opening a similar restaurant here started then.

“We knew there was a gap we could fill,” she says.

The restaurant, Kagayaki by Ishigaki Yoshida, opened on June 6. It has 12 seats around a teppanyaki counter, and a private dining room that seats six. It serves dinner only, with two seatings.

Its opening menu is priced at $380++ a person for nine courses. Diners can also opt for omakase meals priced from $450++ a person and up. In August, a $280++ a person menu will launch, with seven courses. Add-ons include the Chateaubriand Sando ($60++) and Masuda Beef Curry with Rice ($48++).

The main course is Ultimate Crispy Yaki Steak, a signature of chef Yoshida’s, in which the beef is cooked slow and then finished at high temperature, or lobster with sea urchin sauce.

Discussions with chef Yoshida had started in January 2022, and Ms Djojonegoro, 39, was clear from the start about what she wanted.

“I told him that Singaporeans love Japanese food, and are very knowledgeable about it,” she says. “So it cannot just be a high-end teppanyaki restaurant. We needed really good beef and ingredients.”

The chef serves premium beef from Kitauchi Ranch on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa at his Tokyo restaurant, but the farm cannot produce enough to supply Singapore. So he sourced Masuda beef from Gunma Prefecture instead, another premium brand. The cattle are fed on boiled, more easily digested grain; and develop flavour over the 36-month growing period. The restaurant is the only one here that serves it.

She says: “The fat melts at body temperature, like otoro, and is not greasy on the tongue. What you taste is the beef flavour.”

Although the beef takes centre stage, the restaurant also serves seafood from Japan, such as scallops from Hokkaido and seasonal fish. Kagayaki also has a signature salad made with, among other things, fruit tomatoes, Okinawan bittergourd and asparagus, with an anchovy dressing.

Head chef Nobuyasu Kamiko, 49, worked at Kazahana at the Conrad Tokyo for a decade, and was head teppanyaki chef there. He was recruited for the Singapore restaurant and spent six months training at Ishigaki Yoshida. He calls the cooking style “fusion”. The rice for the beef sushi, for example, has ginger in it, rather than vinegar. And the fish is served with a beurre blanc sauce.

The emphasis at the restaurant is on making things from scratch: soba, warabi mochi and the charcoal shokupan used for the sando.

He says: “Singaporeans really know their food, and they ask about ingredients – what’s in season, where it’s from. Diners in Japan are more shy.”

Live seafood

Miyoshi by Fat Cow – Teppan-kaiseki

Where: Mess Hall at Sentosa, 01-04, 2 Gunner Lane
Tel: 6019-0089
Open: Teppan-kaiseki lunch seating at 12.15pm and dinner seating at 6.45pm (Wednesdays to Sundays)
Info:

miyoshi.sg

Diners at Miyoshi’s nine-seat teppan-kaiseki counter feast on marbled Japanese beef in the appetisers, soup, raw in a spring roll, in the sukiyaki course and in the main course. But their meal will also include a raft of seafood – Hokkaido scallops, uni, sea bream and live abalone.

Other seafood include unagi from Japan and lobsters from Australia.

The restaurant, part of food conglomerate Commonwealth Concepts’ portfolio, opened in March 2023 in Sentosa. It is a three-in-one restaurant serving casual food and ramen, with an omakase sushi counter and a teppan-kaiseki counter.

Chefs Khoo Wee Pien, 41, and Toh Chee Han, 43, with 13 and eight years of teppanyaki experience respectively, use the metal griddles in varied ways. Those scallops, for example, are lightly cooked on the teppan and then smoked in straw in a clay vessel set on the cooktop, before being served with shoyu, wasabi and Russian caviar.

The teppan-style sukiyaki course features thin slices of Toriyama wagyu ribeye lightly grilled instead of being simmered in broth, and are served with housemade sukiyaki sauce with a raw Japanese egg yolk in it.

The six-course lunch is priced at $98++ a person, while the 11-course dinner costs $280++ a person.

Theatrics are not a selling point here.

A spokesman says: “Unlike the usual teppanyaki meals with theatrics, selected ingredients are presented alive to guests before they are skilfully prepared on the teppan in an up-close dining experience. The spotlight is placed on the food, service and ambience.”