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No beef with Kobe¡¯s sushi
Japanese steakhouse a welcome addition for landlocked seafood lovers
PEORIA¡ªYou never know what you¡¯re going to get when you order sushi in a city that¡¯s nowhere near an ocean.
So you can imagine my relief when, during a recent visit to Northwest Peoria¡¯s Kobe Steak House of Japan, a rainbow roll and spicy tuna roll that sailed out of the kitchen were fresh, delicious and pleasing to the eye.
Kobe, a chain restaurant with another location in Bloomington, specializes in sizzling tableside service and offers dinners including chicken, steak, shrimp and scallops. There is a health list of appetizers from gyoza (fried Japanese dumplings, ($4) to spring rolls ($5), and lunch bento boxes offer a good sampling for around $8.
And there are lots of options for sushi, which is exciting in a city that offers few places for feasting on high-grade red snapper, squid, eel or octopus.
On a recent visit, my husband and I started with the rainbow roll ($11) and the spicy tuna roll (4 pieces for $4.50). The rainbow roll was a delight: eight pieces stuffed with avocado, cucumber and crab and topped with salmon, tuna and shrimp, arranged by color.
The spicy tuna rolls were excellent, too, especially when dipped in a little soy sauce and wasabi. We also sipped exotic beers: I had the Sapporo, my husband the Kirin (both $3.75).
 
After a small bowl of miso that had thinly sliced mushrooms and onions but seemed a little on the bland side, we were served an iceberg lettuce salad that had a creamy dressing our server said was ginger based.
We were alerted to the next course by our cook, who honked a peppy horn when he arrived with his pushcart. He regaled us and the other diners seated around the grill with big bursts of fire, by tossing eggs and catching them in his hat and by igniting a stack of onion rings and yelling ¡°Fire in the hole!¡±
The Kobe experience is not for the aloof. The dining room is lively and wide open, and you will be sharing dinner-and, essentially, a show-with strangers.salty; the chicken, steak and scallops; then a veggie mixture of broccoli, zucchini, carrots and onions, flipping his spatula the whole time. He was good at evenly distributing the food among diners, if you¡¯re the type to keep track of that sort of thing.
The food was excellent and served as hot as you¡¯ll ever get it at a restaurant, with no down time from grill to plate. The service here is thorough, too. We had several servers, and the cook made sure we were happy with our food.
A friend and I also stopped by for a weekday lunch of bento boxes ($7.50 each). I had the chicken katsu, a large chicken breast that had a nice crunchy breading. My friend¡¯s chicken teriyaki was a good portion of sliced chicken smothered in teriyaki sauce and served with carrots, onions and broccoli, which she liked. We were both served miso soup and a California roll (four pieces that were fresh and delicious), two gyoza and a healthy portion of white rice.
We were seated with group of gentlemen that ordered grilled lunches, so we piggybacked on the noontime show. At a nearby table, a cook tossed vegetables into the mouths of diners and balanced a flaming bowl on his head. With this kind of entertainment and all the sushi you could ever want, many central Illinoisans may forever turn up their noses at brown-bagging it.
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