Welp, we take a couple of weeks off from WTGW for work commitments and our first week back Ted brings us out to a place where you essentially have to cook your own food at your table.

This sounds like a different kind of work.

It’s an interesting concept, and one that I have to admit even after having eaten there I still don’t know that I fully comprehend. Basically the restaurant is all just an all-you-can-eat concept, and you can choose either AYCE sushi or AYCR Korean BBQ for $28.99. Or you can do both for an extra $5.00. If you choose the BBQ then they turn on a little cooktop at your table and bring you all of the fresh ingredients – meats, veggies, etc, all chosen from a menu – and you get to cook it yourself.

I should also mention this isn’t exactly spelled out anywhere as you enter the restaurant. Or on the menu. Thank goodness for a very patient server who went over it all at least twice with us while we sat there probably looking like someone just asked us to read the menu to them in Italian or answer a question about quantum physics.

Maybe because you need all of your brain power for navigating the menu, they have limited alcohol options. A few bottled beers and some wines but that’s about it.

Ted seemed to understand the concept the best, which is probably why he was the only one who chose the cook your own food adventure. I won’t try to list all the items that he requested off of the menu, but they arrived on a little cart and were presented to him very nicely.

Although I did notice there was no mention of how long you need to cook any of the meats, which seemed a little dicey? Like here’s some raw chicken and beef, and some scissors to cut it – but no meat thermometer to test the temperature? Guess you also get a free ride on the wheel of salmonella avoidance. Good luck!

Not willing to risk a night at the ER, Shane and I both went with the safe choice of sushi, with the additional hibachi.

Ted did two rounds of BBQ orders, so he got a few different items each time and then had to prepare them each time they arrived. Which we resized could’ve gotten a bit interesting had Shane or I also opted to cook, because there’s only one cooktop per table and it’s not really large. So if you have two people trying to jockey for space and grill times on meat and vegetables (which we learned take much longer than the meats) it might’ve gotten a little competitive up in there.

We were all impressed though that not only do they bring you all new dishes of ingredients for a second round, but they also come by and change out the grill in between orders too.

Shane and I liked the hibachi best. The steak was really tender and the sauce was good. In hindsight I probably should’ve just eaten that and no sushi at all.

Especially after my last order of sushi, in which I got the single rolls instead of the line of six. I mean, I was almost full at that point and thought one or two rolls was less wasteful that six more I wouldn’t eat.

But then this arrived.

Yeah that’s raw fish, which for as much as I love sushi that’s one thing I cannot tolerate just out there in the open like that. Roll it in the sushi, fine. But lay it on top like it just jumped out of the sea and landed there? Nope. No thank you.

Guess I didn’t read that part of the menu correctly either. Oh well. Thank you, universe, for making it abundantly clear that I needed to stop eating at that moment.

It should be noted that Ted had actually ordered the sushi along with his BBQ – the extra $5.00 option – but they never brought his sushi with the first round of BBQ, and then after that he was so caught up in being a chef that he really just figured it was better that way.

However when we got the checks at the end of it all we discovered they still charged him for it. Boooo.

So yeah I guess just given the novelty of it all it was nice to try for the experience, but now that we’ve had it I’m not sure we need to go back. I’m sure they consider themselves a great option for date night – again, for the experience – but as mentioned already I could see that going south real quick if you have two people competing for cooking space and over the temperature of raw meat. I think there are some ways they might be able to make it more fun, or even more easily understandable to those of us who are more familiar with burgers and wings than playing grill master on a weeknight out, but for now I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this one is probably a one and done in our books.

Picked by: Ted