Teppanyaki Dinner at Murasaki

Murasaki Japanese Restaurant
11/91 Surf Parade, Broadbeach

There's no greater sense of disappointment than spending months looking forward to a weekend retreat at the coast, fantasizing about sunshine, sand and warm waves and arriving to find yourself stuck in a hotel from relentless rain and wind of cyclonic proportions. I had booked 3 nights at the Gold Coast over the Australia Day long weekend. Whilst my hometown of Toowoomba was being drenched, Brisbane was threatened with floods and the coast was being visiblly blown apart in the storm. The 'Big Wet' ruined any chance we had of enjoying the beach but we made the most of the weekend with good company, lots of booze and a couple of food excursions.

On the first night we were at the coast, the rain wasn't too bad so we ventured out on a shopping trip through Broadbeach to pick up snacks and drinks. We noticed plenty of restaurants in the area so we returned later that night for dinner. I wanted to try Firefly for all-you-can-eat Brazillian grilled meat but it was getting a bit late (around 9pm) when we got there and the waiter said they had stopped serving that. We kept walking and ended up in Murasaki.

The restaurant is smallish with a large central kitchen area bordered by teppanyaki plates. There were separate tables available but I wanted to see the action so we perched up around the hotplates. My desire for lots of grilled meat didn't die off when we left Firefly so we ended up ordering a seafood and steak teppanyaki set, called 'Murasaki Deluxe'.

Miso soup, salad and sauces

At first, we were brought out some sides of miso soup, a garden salad and dipping sauces for our meat. I complimented my meal with a glass of bubbly.

It was cool watching the chef cook up our meal. He was well-practiced at tossing food around on the hotplate with nothing other than 2 spatulas. Marc mentioned that he wanted a large hotplate like that at home... but I'm sure the guy just made it look easier than it is.

Murasaki deluxe - with fillet beef, prawns, scallops, salmon and Moreton bay bugs

Once we got our plates of cooked food, we tucked in straight away. It was getting pretty late by now and we were starving! Everything was delicious. The steak was cooked nicely and very tender. Marc loved the bugs, though I thought they were too salty. The scallops were unbelievably huge and juicy. I left the salmon till the end because I thought it would be boring but it was great too. Even the zucchini was good.

We loved our meal at Murasaki. I always think of teppanyaki as 'lower grade', novelty food but I have to say that in this instance, the quality of produce was undeniably good. The service was friendly and we were grateful that they opened late.