Züki Steakhouse a Change of Pace

For someone looking for a change of pace from the usual dining out options, look no further than Mokena’s newest dining option, Züki Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi, 11230 Lincoln Hwy.

Japanese steakhouses are known for their hibachi style of cooking, where a chef cooks your food right in front of you on a flat-iron grill between tricks and stunts with cooking utensils.

I decided to check out Züki last week with my grandma. For someone who can’t hear well and who enjoys traditional dining etiquette and American food, I was pleasantly surprised at how much she enjoyed the experience.

First off, it’s important that you know Züki’s schedule. While they are open Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., they close for two hours and then reopen at 4:30 p.m. for dinner. Since I didn’t bother to check the times beforehand, my grandma and I sipped some Dunkin' Donuts coffee down the strip until they reopened.

The hibachi menu includes standard Japanese steakhouse fare, including chicken, steak, filet mignon, shrimp, scallops, salmon, calamari, lobster or vegetables. There is also a comprehensive sushi menu.

While the prices seemed high, ($17 to $43 for hibachi), we soon found out why. Immediately after we ordered, we each received a bowl of soup. Before I could finish, we were served salad. Not long after, our chef arrived and filled or plates with noodles, fried rice and stir fry vegetables and I still hadn’t finished my soup or salad. This is a lot of food.

The noodle concoctions were really just plain noodles with a lot of sauce. While I recognized the first as soy sauce, the second was anyone’s guess. When I asked Sammy, our chef, what it was, he responded “Züki sauce. Homemade.” The response didn’t fulfill my curiosity, but the taste was incredible.

The same sauces covered our fried rice, which also included peas, onions, carrots and egg.

And then the tricks began. Sammy twirled a whole egg around on a metal spatula and then began tossing it in the air and gently catching it with the spatula. My grandma and I watched, stunned, as the egg stayed in tact until Sammy purposely cracked the egg on the edge of the spatula.

Besides that, it was the usual juggling of the cooking utensils, lighting a mountain of onions on fire and burning the cooking oils with a blaze of fire whenever possible. I had seen all this before at other hibachi grills, but for my first-timer grandma, I heard many “oohs” and “ahhs” escaping from her mouth.

By the time we received our meat and seafood choices, along with two shrimp each, we were both full, which was beyond disappointing. The meat and seafood portions, though delicious, were small compared to the overflow of carbs. I only received four small scallops. In addition, my grandma’s calamari filets were very rubbery and took a full minute to chew through.

The meal ended with the obvious doggy bags and a very small scoop of ice cream. After sitting up slowly and moseying out of the restaurant, our stomachs about to explode from over-indulging, my grandma and I decided we would go back, but only for a special occasion.