Teppanyaki Dinner at Ibuki Shangri la Taipei

Ibuki Shangri la Taipei  seemed like a good choice to have a meal at a Japanese restaurant in Taipei. According to their website, “ibuki by TAKAGI KAZUO is Taiwan’s first Japanese restaurant to operate in concordance with Michelin standards.” It is located on the seventh floor of the Shangri La Far Eastern Plaza Hotel, Taipei (香格里拉台北遠東國際大飯店).

Ibuki Shangri la Taipei has a few seating areas – a general dining area, a sushi counter and a couple of rooms for teppanyaki.  We decided to have a teppanyaki dinner and were shown to a waiting area just outside the teppanyaki rooms. This would also be the place where desserts would later be served after the main teppanyaki courses were over.

Ibuki Shangri la Taipei Menu

There was a choice of ala carte and two set menus.  We opted for the lower priced set menu which costs from NT$2,280 (S$110 approx) depending on the choice of main course. We selected a Boston lobster and a US Prime Short rib.

We had good counter seats, right in the centre facing the chef.

The meal at Ibuki Shangri la Taipei started off with some seafood based appetisers. They were both prepared in front of us.  The crabmeat salad and chawanmushi with queen crab and mullet roe were pretty good.

The teppanyaki dining experience at Ibuki Shangri la Taipei was quite different from what we were expecting. This was a quiet and low key teppanyaki performance. No spatula juggling or fireworks. No eye contact and minimal conversation. Which was a disappointment because to us, a teppanyaki dinner at the counter is as much about the experience as well as the food itself (see e.g.our dinner at Keyaki).

A vegetable dish was prepared – fried mixed vegetables on top of a piece of tomato.

After a while we (together with fellow diners from Hong Kong) encouraged our chef to show us some fire for our pictures. He reluctantly put up a small show with the use of a blow torch.

The next item was a seafood dish of sea perch and Hiroshima oysters. Interestingly for a teppanyaki restaurant, the chef put in considerable effort to plate the items and decorate the dish.  The fish was so so, the oysters were very good.

The blow torch turned up again, this time to sear the meat.

Our US Prime short rib was a small piece of meat.It was quite sinewy and difficult to eat.

The lobster was better tasting but because it was only a half lobster, the meat content was low.

The last savoury dish was a bowl of rice topped with unary. This was an average tasting dish.

We adjourned back to the waiting area for dessert and coffee.  There were two choices and so we selected one of each.  They were both quite unremarkable.

Ratings:

Food: 3

Service: 3

Value: 1

Atmosphere: 3

Overall Rating: 2 TOPs 

Ibuki by TAKAGI KAZUO

Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel, Taipei

201 Tun Hwa South Road, Section 2, Taipei, 10675, Taiwan