Dining Out

Mary Furr

Lunch

The Shima Japanese Restaurant opened on the southeast corner of Adams

Avenue and Brookhurst Street three months ago. It is a teppan and sushi

cafe that offers not only excellent, healthy food but a casual friendly

ambience and intimacy that makes you feel right at home.

Don’t expect booths and tables. Instead, there’s a 10-stool counter across the back where sushi chef David Tyone presides. Four U-shaped

stainless steel teppan grills with dining counters fill the rest of the

room. It is here that chef Ricki Lim prepares your choice of meat, shrimp

and vegetables.

Do expect really fresh food prepared with little oil as chef Ricki

enters the teppan grill where you have been seated. Server Gift

Benjalakorn in a lovely flowered kimono brings a bowl of miso soup --

clear broth with slices of green onion and creamy tofu cubes -- too salty

one time, perfect the next. For the chef she brings lemons, oil, chicken

breast, steak, soy sauce, white rice and an egg.

With formal ceremony, the chef oils the grill, which flames

dramatically as he lights it. He then empties a bowl of tiny chopped

vegetables and steamed small-grained rice to prepare the fried rice ($1

extra) we had ordered. Tossing and slapping fork and spatula together, he

mixes, stirs and seasons two fragrant bowls of fried rice, hot and

delicious, which he puts before you.

Next comes white, deboned chicken and firm but tender New York steak

(lunch $7.50, dinner $19.95). Each order includes teppan-fried mixed

zucchini, carrots and onions. The onions are sliced, formed into a tiny

tower, which is filed with oil, flaming up like a volcano when touched

with a lighter. What a great way to introduce children to Japanese

cooking.

The chicken and steak are cut into cubes and tossed with seasoning for

a wonderful dish that includes the vegetables and a mound of white sticky

rice. The plate as arranged by the chef seems like a colorful picture.

Sushi chef David Tyone, who says he has an American name but prepares

authentic Japanese food, created a sample plate of 5 sushi called “Monkey

Face” of albacore, vinegar, mint leaves and rice with a spicy ponzu

sauce, a bit of heaven in a mouthful. He feels sushi is often

misunderstood -- it’s much more than raw fish and his artistic display is

proof.

Manager Sunny Satawidinata says her husband, teppan chef Ricki Lim,

began in the restaurant business in Malaysia when he was 16 and the last

four years has been at a teppan place in Pasadena before being lured away

to come to Shima. Shima, which means “lake,” is owned by Sunny’s family

who live in Indonesia, but they chose Huntington Beach for their first

restaurant because of the people who “amaze me with their friendliness.”

FYI

Shima Japanese Restaurant

Where: 10076 Adams Ave.

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9:50 p.m., Monday through Friday; 5 to 9:50 p.m.

Saturday; 4 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

Phone: (714) 593-8784

* MARY FURR is the Independent restaurant critic. If you have comments

or suggestions for her, call (562) 493-5062.