Hold the Jokes

At the end of 2006, I sat down and wrote a list of resolutions. But instead of making it a wish list of the things I hoped I would do this year (eat less, exercise more, pray for world peace, blah, blah, blah), I assembled all the things I had already done and never wanted to do again: act in a community-theater play, suffer through a blind date, spend a weekend in Wichita, hike a Montana mountain wearing snowshoes, attend Santi-Cali-Gon Days, eat in another Japanese steakhouse.

I managed to keep most of those vows until recently, when I had a couple of meals at Stix at The Legends. I knew there was a teppanyaki-grill component to the 16-month-old restaurant, but a friend had assured me that I could eat there without ever spotting a flying shrimp or hearing a bad joke. “The Japanese-steakhouse part of the restaurant is in a different room, behind a curtain,” my friend explained. “You don’t even have to see the grills.”

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the teppanyaki concept as a delightful form of entertainment for other people. It’s just not for me, all that communal “fun” of sitting around a hot metal grill with a group of strangers who giggle and clap when a knife-juggling chef creates a smoking volcano out of onions. For me, it’s sheer torture; I’d almost rather sit through another amateur Cats.

The good news at Stix was that if I wanted one of the entrées prepared that way, I could order it right off the menu while sitting in the main dining room — on “the Asian side,” according to the hostess who took my reservation — without sitting through the so-called show. That’s what I call customer service!

Stix is an ambitious concept, offering that Japanese-steakhouse fare along with traditional Chinese-American dishes and some excellent sushi. Like most of the restaurants at The Legends, Stix isn’t a locally grown operation; it’s the first Midwest installment of an Atlanta-based minichain of five restaurants. And it has no connection to Pick Up Stix, the fast-growing, Minneapolis-based chain of casual Chinese restaurants — though judging by some of the flirting I witnessed at the sushi bar, it might be possible to pick up more than a yummy roll.

Because it offers such an array of possibilities, Stix seemed like an ideal location to have dinner with a group of fussy eaters. Lisa, for example, won’t eat seafood (“It’s too fishy,” she insists), and neither Lisa nor her boyfriend, Richard, likes sushi. Judy likes sushi but prefers spicy Chinese fare; her daughter, Carrie, is mad for sushi. And I’ll eat just about anything.

The “Asian side” is a dark, sexy dining room that dominates the front half of Stix and has borrowed some decoration ideas from P.F. Chang’s: stone walls, earthy color tones, drum-style lights (designed here to look as if they’re tortoise-shell) and exceptionally attractive young servers.

As Carrie put it, “Our waiter looks like Ryan Gosling.”

He did, sort of. But it was hard to tell because he seemed to be in constant motion: bringing us metal pots of jasmine tea, plates of excellent chicken-and-vegetable dumplings (the steamed version is better than the crunchy, deep-fried pot stickers), a bowl of hearty miso soup for Carrie and supple slices of pan-seared ahi tuna tataki for the three fish lovers. We even coaxed Lisa to nibble on a piece of that ruby-red tuna. “It isn’t fishy,” she said, marveling at the flavor.

“Fresh fish is never fishy,” Judy said, and we knew what she meant.

Other seafood choices — the dreaded sushi — weren’t alluring enough to tempt Lisa and Richard, though Richard daringly ate one of the maraschino-cherry “eyes” skewered by a toothpick in the slithery caterpillar roll. That roll was also loaded with potential aphrodisiacs: slices of fresh eel, avocado, cucumber and cream cheese, all assembled to look like Disney’s version of a creeping bug.

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Planning to dine only on sushi, Carrie ordered quite a few treasures. She shared the hunky Godzilla roll — packed with crabmeat and fried shrimp — and a sassy soft-shell-crab number but hoarded the nigiri for herself. Judy, Richard and Lisa opted for the all-American Chinese creations, such as the garlic double delight and the Mandarin combination (the latter with all the usual suspects — snap peas, water chestnuts, carrots and onions) in mildly seasoned sauces. The surprise standout dish turned out to be Lisa’s Hunan filet, slices of exquisitely tender beef in a slightly sweet garlic sauce.

I ordered the Stix version of pad Thai and had to dig through a thick layer of chopped peanuts to see whether there were any rice noodles underneath. It wasn’t the most stellar version of this classic Thai dish I’d eaten, but it was pleasant.

The next course wasn’t particularly Chinese or Japanese — for dessert, Lisa ate a tempura-coated ball of fried ice cream, and Richard passed around a slab of warm, fudgy brownie heaped with ice cream and whipped cream. Before we left, we peeked into one of the two rooms with teppanyaki grills. There wasn’t much going on.

One of those rooms was lively on my next visit. “I hope we’re not eating in there,” my friend Frederick said with a grimace when we noticed two groups of diners with many rambunctious children.

Of course not! It was back to the main dining room for us, where an effervescent server named Whitney brought us chicken lettuce wraps and crab wontons along with hot green tea. “It’s jasmine one night, green tea the next. You never know,” she said.

Frederick loved the little purse-shaped, fried wonton puffs filled with cream cheese and a generous amount of what looked like crabmeat. He doused them with cherry-colored sweet-and-sour sauce, then sprinkled a lot of that sugary mess over his dinner. Before he covered it all, I managed to sneak a bite of the tempura-battered chicken pieces in an orange-peel sauce. I love orange-peel anything, but this didn’t taste very citrusy to me; I vastly prefer the slightly bitter orange flavor of Bo Lings’ version of this dish.

Because I didn’t have to sit through the teppanyaki revue, I ordered one of the more interesting offerings from the steakhouse menu: sukiyaki steak. This meal included the standard tiny iceberg lettuce salad, drenched in a bland ginger dressing, and a plastic bowl of watery mushroom broth. It was a disappointing prelude to a really superb meal of tender sliced beef in a silky, deftly spiced sauce and sided with the traditional grilled vegetables, fried rice and two little grilled shrimp. I was much happier to be able to spear the shrimp with my fork rather than lunge for one flying through the air.

Dessert-loving Frederick was intrigued by the idea of a wonton cobbler. It sounded like the worst kind of Chinese-American hodgepodge to me, but the dish leaned more toward the traditional American turnover: four flaky pastry wedges stuffed with apple-pie filling and drizzled with caramel sauce. Frederick loved them, but one was more than enough for me. I liked Stix well enough that I look forward to returning, but I’ll add wonton cobbler to my list of things I don’t need to try again.