图片源于：https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2024/july/yakitori-is-the-star-of-the-200-show-at-mabo/
Few foods are as simple, as elemental, as grilled meat on a stick. The skewer is common to almost every culture and best in the most casual settings: on a backyard Weber grill, in the tight confines of a night market stall’s portable stove, or next to a stack of fluffy pita.
But chef Masayuki Otaka sees an opportunity for yakitori, which features tender cuts of chicken cooked to slow perfection over binchotan charcoal, to be something more. To him, it is both a showcase for top-quality ingredients and technique and a theatrical experience. The grill at Mābo is his stage; it even has a curtain. Otaka performs his smoky dinner theater five nights a week for two seatings of eight customers each. Tickets are as costly as a Broadway show, at $200 each not including tax, tip, or drinks.
There are a handful of premium yakitori specialists in New York, such as Torishin and Kono, but Mābo makes for a Texas first. The restaurant’s space has been designed to carry you out of the reality of Preston Center’s one-way traffic circus. The word “transportive” is often a cliché used to describe a pretty dining room, but in this case it is Otaka’s clear intention. As you step in the door, you’ll first pass through a small antechamber with a slightly irregular and right-leaning stone footpath, which leads into the main dining space. The effect of walking through this portal is like the moment when the children step through the wardrobe and into Narnia.
Masayukiz Otaka has been wowing Dallas diners since opening Teppo in 1995. He has upped his game even further with Mābo’s dramatic dishes. Brittany Conerly
The stark black of the dining room—designed by Otaka himself—underlines this feeling. To the right, a glass wall protects a small rock garden, a sort of architectural illusion. It’s not a patio or a backyard because it’s fully enclosed within Mābo’s black walls. But, with its floor-to-ceiling partition, it’s not a mere decoration, either. If the pace of the meal ever gets too much, turn in your chair and gaze into the stones for a moment.
The next thing you’ll notice, walking into the dining room, is that the curtains are down. Mābo’s kitchen counter is like a theatrical stage, and the show hasn’t started yet, so you’re not allowed to peek. Behind the curtain, you’ll hear workers moving about. The strange setting will add to your anticipation. You’re sitting in a black room where nothing is visibly happening, at a counter hidden by a curtain, next to a rock garden. This is not everyday life.
The prices on the drink menu will contribute to the feeling that you’re in a fantasy world. There are four wines by the glass: two of them $30, one $40, and a $60 glass of Ruinart bubbles. Sake runs from a single $40 pour to a $2,000 bottle. Here’s a tip for less ambitious drinkers: although it’s not listed on the menu, Asahi beer is available.
We’ve all been trained since childhood to get excited when the show starts, so when an employee flips a switch and the curtains begin to rise, the moment feels like magic. It’s flamboyant and absurdly effective. What follows is a multicourse tour of Japanese cooking styles: prepared appetizer dishes, sashimi, rice bowls, grilled items.
The grill is the centerpiece because Otaka spent decades serving Dallasites as chef-owner of the celebrated yakitori restaurant Teppo. Teppo’s national significance remains unappreciated. Although there were a few yakitori specialists in other cities before its debut in 1995, the food was still new enough to America that, that same year, the New York Times called yakitori “Japanese Chicken McNuggets.”
Dinner at Mābo offers more variety than any other omakase-style tasting menu in Dallas, most of which focus on sushi and sashimi. To a degree, though, the meal may also offer less variation on return visits. Comparing my menu to those received by friends who visited in other months, I noticed that seasonal changes took place within set parameters. The soup appetizer, for example, has remained a cream of seasonal vegetable. The exact sashimi and yakitori cuts may vary somewhat—I got a slice of duck breast; a friend got Texas quail instead—but, in the broadest sense, the elements of a Mābo meal are reliable.
Here is a snapshot of dinner as Mābo served it one night this spring. First course: a slice of shokupan (milk bread) toasted and topped with a generous scoop of chicken liver pâté, shavings of black truffle, and nasturtium leaves. My favorite part was the largest garnish, a golden fried lotus root chip, onto which I scooped some of the extra pâté. Next came a petite bowl of warm, gentle asparagus cream soup, kept simple to leave its two main ingredients the stars. The third appetizer was the most complex: shrimp poached in tea until barely cooked through, then folded in between a shiso leaf and a slice of daikon. Naturally, caviar was hidden inside the bite, too.
The curtains are up at Mābo. Brittany Conerly Chicken liver mousse served on a slice of Japanese milk bread, with a crispy lotus chip on top that you can use to scoop up extra mousse. Brittany Conerly After your meal, your most vivid memory will be the sight of chef Masayuki Otaka working over his grill, preparing extraordinary yakitori. Brittany Conerly Not everything at Mābo is grilled on a skewer. Appetizers feature fresh seafood in indulgent, luxury-oriented preparations. Brittany Conerly
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After that indulgence, we moved on to a sashimi sampler, the first of the two main features. But the show began before the food arrived. We watched as Otaka prepared the long, skinny boxes on which the sashimi would be served. The boxes were first filled with chipped ice. Then, using chopsticks, Otaka slid the excess ice to one end, to prop up garnishes. He placed the sashimi in the order that he wanted us to eat it, left to right, from tuna to octopus tentacles to a slice of pale shima aji that was butterflied open and stuffed with fresh wasabi.
Next, our server explained some items that had been sitting on the counter the whole time: two wooden boxes, each containing a different seasoning mix, and a long dish. These were for the yakitori and kushiyaki grilled items that form the heart of Otaka’s menu. Try different grilled skewers with the seasonings—one is citrusy sansho pepper; the other mixes seven kinds of hot chile powder—and then deposit your used skewers in the dish.
Mābo Park Cities 6109 Berkshire Ln., Ste. B 214-444-6696 $$$ Here, at last, Otaka took center stage at his countertop theater. In the weeks after your dinner at Mābo, you’ll best remember him standing amid a plume of smoke, prodding and testing the doneness of each chicken heart. He serves more typical cuts (thigh) and revelatory ones (“first wing,” the drumette). He forms chicken meatballs. And there are veggies, too. We got a skewer of grilled romaine lettuce ribs, lightly dressed and topped with bonito flakes that resemble, in looks but not taste, the shredded Parmesan on a Caesar salad.
When an employee flips a switch and the curtains begin to rise, the moment feels like magic. Otaka’s time on the grill is the highlight of the meal and the course that is offered in encore form; you can order more cuts for an added charge. Our savory finale was a fluffy rice bowl topped with all the superluxury trimmings: caviar, black truffle, uni (sea urchin), and an egg yolk. I’ll confess that although I understand why scarcity makes caviar, truffle, and uni luxurious, I don’t detect any flavor in all of them mixed together. Maybe it’s me. Dessert was a scoop of tea gelato.
All this for $200. The question of value is best left to your own judgment. In the future, I’d like to save room for the supplemental à la carte offerings, which include some of the best and most unusual cuts of chicken (even the tail) and more vegetables as well. These add-ons offer the best chance to make each meal at Mābo different from the last. On a first visit, I delighted in one: the indulgent “oyster” cut of chicken thigh, tiny portions of the thigh’s backside that many chefs consider the most tender part of the whole bird.
The context for Mābo’s indulgence is Dallas’ ever-clearer claim to have the best Japanese dining scene between America’s coasts. From affordable ramen shops and katsu specialists to special-occasion omakase dinners, our Japanese food market has extraordinary range and depth. This may be surprising on a surface level—we’re a landlocked city on a hot prairie—but North Texas has deep business ties to Japan, our airport has three direct commercial flights to the country every day, and the first pioneering Japanese chefs to arrive in our city decades ago set extraordinary standards for quality. They weren’t just teaching Americans how to enjoy sushi, skewers, and sake. They were training us to expect the best.
Otaka was one of those pioneers. Now he’s something closer to a local legend, one who earned this glamorous solo act over decades of work at Teppo. Mābo is about more than the elevation of grilled meat from street snack to dinner theater. It’s also about our city’s embrace of top Japanese cooking—thanks, in part, to the man behind the curtain.
This story originally appeared in the July issue of D Magazine with the headline “Black Box Theater” Write to [email protected].
