Okada, a Japanese Steak and Seafood House, California, MD March 28, 2010

Okada

Wildewood Shoppping Center

23415 Three Notch Road #2015

California, MD 20619
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301 866 9595

Let’s face it!  This is not a seriously sophisticated restaurant, but it is a lot better than many of the places in the surrounding area.  For the last six years, I have had at least one child at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  It is fun to take them out when we visit, but many of the places we have gone to have been disappointing, and others seem to have closed as soon as we started liking them.

The bar at Okada, a Japanese restaurant in California, Maryland

But it was a lot of fun to eat here.  On Sunday, you can order only off the dinner menu, and like a lot of Japanese steakhouses, the deal is fixed price based on your main course.  Two of us had a filet mignon and scallops ($22.95), and one of us had the New York strip steak ($19.95).  A bowl of soup, a nicely dressed salad, and a small appetizer are also included.  Choices for appetizer are chicken liver, mushrooms, or shrimp.  We all picked the shrimp.  I had a club soda ($1.95) and we also had two green teas ($1.95).  The total including tax (but not tip) was $82.36 for three people.

Our chef making a volcano out of an onion

Cooking dinner was quite a performance as it usually is in Japanese steakhouses with the food cooked in front of you by a chef willing to perform all sorts of tricks to make you laugh and occasionally feel quite frightened.  This particular chef took more risks than most of them and that made his show all the more entertaining although quite a few bits of food wound up on the floor, including an egg that he was trying to toss into his pocket!  He also performed another trick of flicking pieces of shrimp into our open mouths, and this, of course, resulted in quite a few morsels on the floor.

It was a lot of fun to go out to lunch here, and we’ll definitely be back — possibly to party with Hannah, her friends, and their parents when she graduates on May 15th.  Recommended.