RESTAURANT REVIEW : Style, Chef Spice Up Mori’s Grill

I figured someone was trying to pull the wool over my eyes when I saw the name Mori’s Teppan Grill and Hibachi Pasta.

Hah! They must think we just fell off the giant radish truck. How do you cook pasta on a hibachi? I tried once, and it fell right in.

My suspicions are now confirmed. I’ve been to Mori’s, and the chefs actually cook their pasta on a teppan , the same metal griddle the rest of the food is cooked on. I can’t get too worked up though, because I did have a lot of fun there.

It would be easy to call the restaurant a Benihana clone, especially since owner Morris Mori once worked as a chef in New York’s Benihana. But that wouldn’t be quite fair. The place has personality, and it doesn’t feel like a Benihana at all--it’s smaller and livelier--even though the food does taste pretty much the same.

It’s a great-looking restaurant: Japanese punk deconstructionism, such as you see in Tokyo’s Harajuku section, where young people get rowdy on Sunday afternoons. Huge exposed black vents jut down from the ceiling like demons from a Japanese Noh play. The walls are painted a devilish red.

The food you’ve seen before. Gyoza, the Japanese version of pot stickers, are deep-fried to the crispness of Cheetos, oozing juice from their meaty fillings. Egg rolls are perfunctory at best: oily, salty finger food that belies all the virtues of Shinto purity. And various hand rolls and sushi, eaten before the show starts, are generic interpretations that wouldn’t turn a single head at a quality sushi bar.

As for the pastas, they have to be ordered separately. They aren’t part of any of the teppan dinners. And don’t expect spaghetti. What you get are somen: ultra-thin strands of semolina noodles cooked up with dazzling rapidity by one of those guys from the Ginsu commercials. That’s all the dazzle they provide.

You can have your pasta with vegetables, chicken, beef or shrimp, but it doesn’t really much matter, they’re all salty and bland. Put a little shichimi on them--a fiery Japanese red pepper you can get from the kitchen--and that will liven things up.

The teppan dishes are much better. The chef cooks for everyone seated at the grill area at once, and there are no two ways about it. (The grill areas generally seat eight.) We were lucky, because we had a chef with the hand speed of Sugar Ray Leonard and the demeanor of John Belushi. As he diced, chopped and flipped, he did little tricks with his pockets and grunted effusively. And somehow, his antics made the food taste better.

You know the rest. You begin with a reasonable vegetable soup, a clear broth with a bit of carrot floating majestically near the top. Then you progress to an appetizer of good fresh shrimp diced and cleaned on the grill at the speed of light.

The obligatory salad follows, with that perplexing cultural anomaly the Japanese have embraced wholeheartedly, Thousand Island dressing. Then the various meats are cooked up and presented for approval, if they happen to be cuts of beef. Scallops, lobster and swordfish are also available as options for grilling, and all come out pretty tasty.

Last come the vegetables: bean sprouts, onions and zucchini, all julienned and doused with a surfeit of oil. Perhaps the chef is liberal with oil to make them cook faster. I’d prefer less, myself.

One thing you want to make sure not to miss is the fried rice. It’s served at no extra charge, and really is delicious. The chef dices up some cooked egg, some minced onions and some secret spices (well, he said they were secret), then mixes in the rice.

Suggested dishes: New York steak dinner, $14.25; filet mignon dinner, $15.25; seafood combo, $19.95.

Mori’s Teppan Grill and Hibachi Pasta, 120 W. Stocker St., Glendale, (818) 548-4227. Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m., Monday through Thursday, to 10:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Valet and free self-parking. Beer and wine only. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $25 to $50.