Sumo-Sized Dohyo: Big on Appearances

Ready or not, here comes Dohyo, Southern California’s largest Japanese restaurant: 9,000 square feet of teppan dining and Polynesian drinks.

Prepare to be impressed. A 15-foot-high statue of a sumo wrestler greets you in the restaurant’s front lobby. The statue is more than twice the size of Japan’s reigning sumo champion, Akebono--otherwise known as Chad Rowan, a whopping 6-foot-9, 467-pounder born in Hawaii. (Fortunately, the statue isn’t half as menacing as Rowan.)

Dohyo--the name comes from the Japanese word for the circular ring where sumo wrestlers do combat--is the latest venture of Japan-born, San Fernando Valley-reared businessman Bruce Kanenobu, who apparently doesn’t take stock in the adage about small packages; his Pasadena restaurant, Shogun, is also enormous. Kanenobu’s restaurants have real personality, anyway--less traditional and definitely more flashy than, say, your typical Benihana.

Dohyo’s ultra-swank teppan room, where meals are prepared on flat metal grills, is decorated with flair. The rich, wood-paneled walls contain built-in shelves showcasing colorful Japanese fans and cast iron tsuru --cranes, symbolizing longevity. Comfy, well-spaced teppan tables sit under enormous, sharply angled hoods, themselves primal metal creatures that swoop down over the grill surfaces like primitive, predatory birds, keeping the room magically smoke-free.

In the Polynesian room, the specialties are such tried-and-true Chinese dishes as cashew shrimp and moo shu pork, along with a bit of sushi and a few Thai favorites. This room is intended for faster, less structured dining, done up with tropical plants and bamboo furniture like an upscale Hawaiian hotel.

Never mind that the food in either of these rooms is mostly generic, hardly better or worse than in other restaurants of this genre. (The Polynesian room’s garlic chicken, pahd Thai and tuna hand roll rate no better than average marks.) With its prime location, adjacent to Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim Convention Center and now the newly opened Anaheim Arena, Dohyo seems destined to make a big splash. Clever fellow, this Bruce Kanenobu.

My main gripe with teppan dining is the way the meal is structured. Normally, you order drinks and specify the meats you want grilled, then sit there and wait for a chef to come sauntering by. When one does, you are generally rushed along through the various courses at whatever pace he decides to work. At least here a large, a la carte appetizer list makes it possible to control the pace somewhat. You can order appetizers--dim sum or even satay--before the teppan service even begins.

Pot stickers are probably the best of the dim sum. They are made with a light chicken filling inside a crisp, oil-free skin of noodle dough. Ha gow are delicate steamed crescents of minced shrimp, scallions and bamboo, and there’s a great dipping sauce to go with them. I’m less sure about the snack they call Thai shrimp, which is an unwieldy invention of bacon-wrapped shrimp deep-fried in a coating of crunchy Chinese noodles. The thing falls apart when you pick it up, and you almost break your teeth on the bacon.

When it’s time for your teppan show, the chef cooks for everyone at once (tables seat up to eight), and there are no two ways about it. Our chef went through the obligatory flips and chops, catching shrimp tails in his hat and engaging in other general mischief, so we were all relieved when our meat came up the degree of doneness that we specified.

The show starts with a shrimp appetizer and a bowl of delicious fried rice, the best rice I’ve ever had at a teppan restaurant. The shrimp are good and fresh, diced up on the grill with various spices, and when you finish you are served a bland vegetable soup and a good salad with a chunky ginger sesame dressing. The dressing, incidentally, is a big improvement over the faux-Thousand Island dressing many Japanese people favor. It’s tangy and complex, making the fresh greens taste even fresher.

But things get considerably more mundane from there on, largely due to the fact that the various meats and vegetables all begin to taste the same when they are cooked on the metal grill. Scallops, lobster and shrimp are available as options for grilling, and all come out reasonably tender and tasty. The butter-soft filet mignon is easily the best cut of beef served here. The other choice, a New York cut, can be on the tough side.

The best deal is certainly to order a combination dinner like Imperial or Ninja. The Imperial comes with New York steak, a good griddled chicken studded with white sesame seeds and a choice of either shrimp or scallops. (Take the scallops.) Ninja, served for a minimum of two persons, consists of king crab legs, lobster, steak and chicken.

All dinners come with vegetables, bean sprouts (cooked up separately) and a combination of onions, mushrooms and zucchini, julienned and doused with a lot of oil. As is always the case in teppan restaurants, the chefs are liberal with oil because more speeds up the cooking process. Better say something if you don’t like it that way.

You finish up with a generous scoop of either green tea or coconut ice cream. Tea is extra. Only a 15-foot sumo wrestler, by the way, would walk away from all this hungry.

Dohyo is moderate to expensive. Appetizers from the Polynesian bar are $3.95 to $4.95. Dim sum are $5.95 to $8.50. Teppan dinners are $11.75 to $23.75.

* DOHYO

* 3500 W. Orangewood Ave., Orange.

* (714) 634-1305.

* Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; dinner Monday through Friday 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday 5 to 10:30 p.m., Sunday 4:30 to 9:30 p.m.

* All major cards accepted.