Teppanyaki Lovers

Teppanyaki Lovers
Shop 7, The Myer Centre, Brisbane CBD



It's astounding that I practically lived in the city for 3+ years doing uni and never ate at this place. I recall they refurbished at one point and came up with the current cartoony shop front and food that wasn't just teppanyaki-based.



Byron and I were in town last weekend. We arrived absolutely famished some time in the afternoon. It was pouring too. We had planned to go to Ajisen on George Street but with the increase in hunger and rainfall, we quickly changed our plans to somewhere closer.

After fleeing to the Myer Centre for shelter, we spotted Teppanyaki Lovers and thought BAM: fast food Japanese. How perfecto.


Orders were given and we received our order number... and waited. There are a few communal food courty tables/chairs to sit at. The counter lady had a really quiet voice and we had some communication problems so I was a bit anxious about whether everything had been processed corrected.

Many moons passed (ok, not really, but it was a torturously long wait for a fast food joint and yes, I did consider that maybe time slowed in correlation with my hunger but I took that into account and it was still a long time) and finally no 38 was called and we could collect our boxes.

Takoyaki

We had some takoyaki (octopus balls) to start with. My expectations for these were quite low, which may seem strange since no one forced me to order them. They were a pleasant surprise. There was a significant portion of octopus in the filling, as opposed to big flour balls like I imagined.

Large chicken katsu curry

Byron had ordered the chicken katsu curry in large. It was a huge serving size - enough to satisfy even a hungry male who'd just traveled from Toowoomba. The curry was topped with a sprinkling of Japanese pickles, which I'm not a fan of but I do believe most people like to have with their Japanese curry. The katsu was nice and crunchy.

Vegetable okonamiyaki

My pick was the vegetable okonamiyaki, aka Japanese pancake. This was also huge and topped with a crunchy fried noodle basket, filled with pickles and things. I'm not a pickle hater, though this post may suggest otherwise, but I didn't see how pickles would compliment my pancake so I handed the basked over to Byron to devour.

The pancake itself was delish. These things are very simple and homely, and as Byron pointed out, seemingly a mix of left-overs fused together with pancake batter (a bit like English bubble and squeak). Nothing wrong with that, IMO. I was happy with the generous quantities of vegetables, made interesting with batter, sweet soy and mayo.

Complimentary miso soup

We were also given complimentary mini miso soups. These were disappointing. Byron's was icy cold and mine, well I don't love miso soup to start with but I thought this was foul. The intentions were good but they were probably better off not giving us any.

Though the waiting time at Teppanyaki Lovers was too long for my liking, I was happy with the food. It's cheap, you get huge serving sizes and most importantly, it all tasted good.