Xanadu delivers quality in buffet

If you like Japanese food, and fresh foods prepared on the spot, then you will probably like eating teppanyaki at Xanadu.

The restaurant's appealing young teppan-yaki chefs take bowls of fresh foods to the teppanyaki counter, and then begin preparations on a large piece of stainless iron.

At the same time, the wait staff will serve Japanese appetizers to the table. The restaurant offers a 288-yuan ($46) per person buffet that includes more than 200 items. That means you can order anything among the 200 items within three hours' time.

We were served a fresh bowl of assorted sashimi, with sea unchin, salmon, tuna, sweet peony shrimps, and snow crab legs. Then came a salad of fresh greens, a bowl of white-chopped chicken, and soft-tasting deep-fried prawn balls with a flour wrapping.

The foods come with three sauces - a mayonnaise for deep-fried food, a black pepper sauce for beef, and soybean sauce and wasabi for sashimi. One is likely to feel pampered to have so many bowls of food on the table already.

After the appetizers, the teppanyaki chef begins to work - codfish, foie gras served on bread topped with caviar, dry-roasted prawn directly prepared from the kitchen, freshly roasted oyster, and beef steaks.

You can ask for a flambe performance from the chef. It is a pleasure to see your food sizzling on the hot iron plate and smell its aroma.

The seafood used in the sashimi and the teppanyaki was of rather high quality. According to the restaurant manager, the owner of Xanadu is in the seafood business, making it convenient to get fresh supplies.

The beef included in the 288-yuan set meal is mediocre. You just can't deliver high quality beef and all those other dishes at that price.

Some highlights of the set meal are Arctic pole clam shellfish from Canada, snow crab, salmon from Norway, and valuable blue-fin tuna. If you want to order more expensive ingredients, the restaurant has lobster, Australian abalone, and wagyu on the a la carte menu.

The restaurant's interior decor reminds one of a French restaurant, with chandeliers, curtains and golden patterns on the wall and ceiling.

The lighting is a bit dark. There are several tappanyaki iron plates along the walls for six to eight people. Private rooms have teppanyaki, too.

There is a sashimi bar at a corner where customers can sit and have a cup of sake while watching chefs prepare their food. The counter has a display of Chinese liquor and imported wines. The 288-yuan meal has wine, saki, beef, Sprite and Baxy ice cream.

If there is any problem, the ventilator works with a bit loud noise in the big room. The ventilator seemed to be in the way of the chef, and she had to bend over it to serve food.

Another thing: The waitress serving us sometimes took away my plate with unfinished food without asking. Maybe it was because there were a lot of guests on our table.

But generally speaking, Xanadu is a good place to take your friend or family for a decent meal on a festive occasion.