T-Koto serves up a great hibachi experience

This is not a review of the sushi, or the specialty rolls, or the lunch and dinner entrées, at T-Koto, a new Japanese restaurant in the Fort Union neighborhood.

Because T-Koto is a Japanese steakhouse, this is, in fact, a review of the dining experience known here as hibachi, and at other, similar restaurants as teppanyaki.

I still remember the first time I visited this kind of restaurant, Gasho of Japan in Denver. I was with a big family group, we talked and ate and laughed and our server took our picture at the end, grouped next to the grill.

That's the essence of these types of places for me: The food must be good, but it's also about the experience. So, with that in mind, here's my view of T-Koto's hibachi experience, starting with: the ambience.

T-Koto (I keep wanting to call it Kyoto or Tokyo) is welcoming, clean and streamlined, with booths for non-hibachi diners, a sushi bar complete with flat-screen TV and a half-dozen grills under gleaming stainless steel hoods, each of which comfortably seats eight.

Our family of six had more than enough room at our grill for all the dishes of sauce, salad and soup bowls and dinner plates that we collected during our meal. The lighting is sufficient but not too bright, and the tables are sufficiently far apart to avoid crowding.

I noticed there was no background music playing, which I liked in this particular setting, as there was plenty of other noise: the hiss and crackle of the grill, the running commentary of our chef, our conversation and our server asking if we needed drink refills.

Which brings me to: the service, which was excellent.

Our server kept the drinks topped off and forks on hand for whoever needed them and made sure to check on us regularly, but not so often it was annoying.

Several other staff members stopped by the table, too, including what seemed to be the manager, to make sure we were happy. This is a new restaurant, so of course they're anxious to please, but I hope they continue to be this attentive to their diners.

Of course, I won't leave out the staff member we saw most, our chef, but I'm calling him: the entertainment, because as he prepared our meals of rice, noodles, vegetables and three kinds of meat cooked five different ways, he kept up a running commentary of wry remarks and displayed a succession of tricks and skills, some of them classics to this genre — the onion volcano, the soy sauce squirt bottle that shoots string at an unsuspecting kid — and some that were more original.