21 JUL 08: DINNER AT MICKEY T'S

The last time I drove down Manchester Expressway, a sign outside Shogun said the restaurant would reopen soon. You may recall it was severely burned by a fire last July. I'm not sure if it took that long to rebuild the building - or to get worker visas for the Japanese chefs.

Columbus has several other Japanese restaurants, of course. Shogun opened a new location at Columbus Park Crossing. Fuji isn't too far away. Then there's a longtime restaurant you may have forgotten - Mikata at The Landings. It sits between Mediterranean Café and Ben's Chop House, from east to west. Which is strange, because you'd have to go the opposite direction to experience those cultures for real.

This weekend marked my first visit to Mikata, and it was an interesting amalgamation of east and west. It starts in the lobby, with what I think was supposed to be a Japanese-style version of classical music playing in the background. I eventually decided it was Mannheim Steamroller -- which can sound like everything from Oriental to Celtic, depending on what you're drinking.

Our group had the typical Japanese steakhouse experience, sitting in a room around two heating tables. I joked to people around me that the arrangement looked like a made-for-TV poker room - only the workers stacked up rice, instead of chip stacks.

(We are saying nothing more about this group, because several members specifically asked NOT to be mentioned here. And here's the amazing thing - not one of them is running for political office.)

Dinner at Mikata is served in several courses. Ours began with a very nice small bowl of mushroom soup, in what tasted like beef broth. They gave me a soup spoon, so I used it. After all, we weren't sitting on the floor....

The second Mikata course was a basic mostly-lettuce salad, with honey-mustard dressing. At this point, our chefs came out and began their show with the main dishes. We apparently had to trust an unseen apprentice with shredding the lettuce properly.

No Japanese steakhouse dinner would be complete without a display of fire. The chefs prepared the heating tables by pouring what someone in our group called "five-dollar vodka" on them. That may explain the lack of an aftertaste on our rice.

The staff actually seemed to be from Japan -- because they understood what I meant when I said "konichi-wa." That word for "hello" will remain with me, because the late Lonnie Jackson often said it. But please don't ask me to recite the cleanup month pledge....

(My longtime pastor once asked a hibachi chef if he was really Japanese -- and discovered the man was Korean. I wouldn't dare ask that kind of question. If you walked into El Vaquero and asked about the staff members' nationalities, they might run out the door in fear.)

We ordered teriyaki chicken, cooked "medium." Others in the group asked beef medium-well - which our chef translated as "no moo." I wondered about that retired baseball pitcher's last name....

Our plate was filled one step at a time - first with grilled rice, then cabbage that we mistook for noodles, followed by vegetables and the chicken. The chicken was so sweet that we didn't need the two sauces in tiny cups on the side. Did we hear someone say a sauce came from Ginger Lake?!

Chopsticks are optional with dinner at Mikata. We were handed a set, and tried to use them for the first time in several years. But when the chicken pieces hit our plate, the sticks soon were set aside - and without Chef Lee walking over, like he does with the CB&T President in that commercial.

After dinner, the Mikata staff served us ice cream for dessert. But a few people in our group were disappointed, because there was only vanilla - and it was only ice cream, not sherbet. You'd think a Japanese restaurant might have a "green tea" flavor....

Mikata serves a full four courses, but it's a touch on the pricy side. Vegetable dinners cost ten dollars. My teriyaki chicken cost $13.95. And some items on the menu were in the 28-dollar range - as if they were keeping up with the Chop House next door.

But with soda and a tip, my dinner at Mikata cost 21 dollars. I suppose that's not bad, considering what I've heard about inflation and fuel costs hitting restaurants hard. Who knows how much it costs to fly in vodka from Tokyo?

OVERHEARD OVER HERE: The church school teacher gushed about how spiritually overcome she sometimes is while she's driving. "I might be raising my hands, singing a song, driving on the wrong side of the road...."

"Yes," a class member responded. "And if you raise your hands, you might wind up on the wrong side of the road."

Now let's get on the right side of some weekend news developments....

+ A public auction sold off the remaining furniture from Raymond Rowe's "1200 Store for Homes" downtown. What a turn of events - as furniture once displayed in High Point was removed at a low point.

+ The evening news showed a big pile of debris in the middle of the Columbus Civic Center. The building will be closed for two months, while a new floor and refrigeration unit are installed. Then hopefully the debris will be stored for future use -- either at the skate park, or the next motocross competition.

(So does this mean this year's International Festival at the Civic Center is canceled? It's usually held in August, after all. And it seems too large to fit in the parking lot of an International House of Pancakes.)

+ Bruster's shops marked National Ice Cream Day by offering 99-cent cones. This shows how inflation is still a problem in our area - because the high temperature was only 97 degrees F.

+ The Northern Little League All-Stars stayed alive in the Georgia state tournament by mauling "Masters City" of Augusta 19-7. Aw c'mon - Masters City? Too many people outside Georgia would think that refers to Amsterdam.

BURKARD'S BEST BETS: Gas for $3.93 a gallon at Petro, Andrews Road and Brown Avenue.... "happy hour" drinks for half-price at Sonic from 2:00-4:00 p.m.... and large numbers of people applying to work at Buck Ice....

SCHEDULED THIS WEEK: Did a local candidate make a big boo-boo? (No, Mark LaJoye, it's not you.) We'll show you the evidence....

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BURKARD BULK MAIL INDEX: 804 (- 29, 3.5%)

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