Lucky Day!

One of the things Craig wanted for Christmas was dinner at a restaurant where they cook it in front of you, like Benihana. The closest Benihana is in Chicago, but there is a Fort Wayne look-alike called Takaoka, which is pretty close to the real thing. We decided to go Wednesday night. I didn't even think about making reservations, but when we got there, there was a 2-hour wait. Apparently the restaurant downstairs, which is owned by the same people, had a problem in the kitchen and they couldn't cook so they moved all of their reservations to Takaoka, completely booking it until 9:30. We asked about openings for Thursday and he told us to go upstairs and check directly with the restaurant. We all hiked up there and explained what we wanted to the host, but Thursday, being New Year's Eve, was all booked so we thought we were out of luck until the guy said, "Just a minute." He started counting seats around the Hibachi grills then came back and told us that there was a party of 4 at one of the tables and they could add another chair to fit us in. (The tables usually seat 8.) We got a very entertaining chef, Craig loved the food and ate nearly all of it, even the mushrooms, zucchini and bean sprouts. He lucked out again when 3 of the 4 other people sitting at our table had birthdays, got free ice cream and one of them didn't want it so he offered it to the kids. It was a very enjoyable evening and we are all stuffed, except for Craig who said he is still kind of hungry.