‘Honored guests are here,” says Robata’s owner Tomoko Yotsumoto, in Japanese that is loud enough for her staff to hear, as she seats patrons at their tables. The effect is to make the Japanese surroundings even more inviting in a restaurant whose name means “fireside.”

Fireside dining is always available on Robata’s patio, but when we visited the restaurant, my husband Laurent, friend Jessica, and I chose to eat in the cozy indoors with dark woodwork, rice paper covering false windows, and hanging red lanterns. Laurent picked up on the Japanese genius for design by noticing how one table would be covered with a blue tablecloth, while the table next to it was covered with two blue cloth napkins laid out to look like diamonds. Japanese music played softly.

Robata’s menu reflects the steakhouse and sushi bar tradition that became popular in the US as chefs applied Japanese cooking methods to items such as beef that rarely show up in Japanese cuisine.

Laurent’s appetizer, called kushiyaki ($8.75), was a filet mignon kebab with teriyaki sauce, and qualifies as a Japanese steakhouse invention. Green peppers separated the tender, grilled chunks of meat that the chef glazed with a sauce made of soy sauce, sugar, and sweet rice wine. Sesame seeds decorated the kebabs along with wisps of fresh ginger, adding a lively flavor to this delicious combination. The kushiyaki came on a dark green ceramic dish with a burgundy flower, which accented the color of the peppers.

A fresh, green leaf, along with slender lemon slices recalling summer, decorated my dish of octopus sashimi ($9.50/six pieces). I shared the raw octopus with Jessica, and we both agreed that it was chewy without being tough. I could taste the ocean in the octopus slices. I am wary of raw octopus, though, since my first try left a sucker attached to my lip; I like fresh food, but not that fresh.

Sashimi serves as the typical prelude to sushi. I followed suit with an order of hachi machi, yellowtail, nigiri sushi ($4.75/two pieces) and tamago, egg omelet, sushi ($3.50/2 pieces). Nigiri sushi, a specialty of Tokyo, represents what most of us associate with sushi: small rectangles of vinegar rice topped off with raw fish or other toppings.

Robata’s deft sushi chefs were busily developing carpal tunnel syndrome during our visit. The yellowtail itself was silky and had a faint fish flavor. The one thing missing from my hachi machi nigiri sushi was the thin layer of wasabi, ground green horseradish, that usually goes into its making. The wasabi helps hold the sushi together. The only reason that I could think of for not including it is that most people load up on so much wasabi in their dipping sauce that they kill the delicate flavor of the sushi. There is a trick to keeping your sushi from falling apart regardless of whether or not you have wasabi in your sushi, and that is to dip the topping side in the soy sauce and not the rice.

I learned to eat tamago, Japanese omelets, when I lived in Japan. The flavor disconcerts most Americans to begin with, because sugar goes into the omelet’s preparation. The flavor of the rectangular slice of tamago, held onto the rice by a strip of nori seaweed, reminded me of French toast. I liked this dunked in soy sauce without wasabi.

The Japanese love for sweet flavors came out in the dipping sauce for Jessica’s tempura ($14.75) as well. This seafood-flavored sauce had sweet rice wine, sugar, and soy sauce added to its seaweed and dried bonito stock. I suspect that the batter for Jessica’s tempura contained egg as well as flour and water, since the golden  coating tasted so rich.  A plain flour and water batter makes for a crispier version of this dish.

Jessica had a plateful of shrimp and vegetables and asked me to help her out. I particularly liked the sweet potato tempura. The shrimp tasted sweet, even without dunking them in the sauce. The trick to keeping the shrimp nice and long when frying them is to cut along the underbelly so they do not curl.

Laurent loved his grilled sand dabs ($13.25). They had a salt-and-pepper breading that made them irresistible—like eating a bagful of potato chips.

Laurent drank a Sapporo ($4) beer with his dinner while I sampled a Kirin beer ($4). I think the Kirin tastes sweeter than the Sapporo and goes better with the sweet sauces and glazes on the food. We also drank the warm house sake ($4.75) that had a sweetfinish to it.

A rich green tea ice cream put the finish on our meal ($3). It was easy to say “gochisoosamadeshita” to Yotsumoto, meaning “we have eaten well,” as we left our table.

ROBATA GRILL AND SAKE BAR
3658 The Barnyard, Carmel
624-2643
11am-2:30pm Mon-Sat lunch
5–9pm Sun-Thurs; 5-9:30pm
Fri-Sat Dinner