Koke Teppanyaki & BBQ (Japanese)

 Koke Teppanyaki & BBQ is located at 8241 Woodbine Ave. in Markham. We went for weekday lunch. We chose the best value menu which is the “beef lover”, $29 weekend. There is a fixed set on the front of three appetizers and a meat set, and after that orders are from the back of the menu. There were a few other diners but it was Friday so was slower. Pop is included and canned which is excellent but only Coke, Canada Dry ginger ale and Sprite... no diet options. Definitely no complaints from me though as it’s excellent that it’s included. Soy-based sauce at table with sweet fresh and delicious. In the “flavours” section on the menu is so-called “fresh wasabi”, but as expected it was just the plain old fake stuff, puréed horseradish out of a tube.

Green salad had a fantastic vinegar-based dressing which was among the better I've had. The waitress actually demoed cooking some of the items at the beginning which no one has ever done before. It turned out very well with the included sesame oil and egg sauces with the two varieties of beef wrapped around shredded onion. The meats including the salmon belly were very good to excellent, even the AYCE after the first set order, well-marbled and flavourful. They went well enough with the sauces that I needed up finishing both sauces.

Mishy really liked the vegetable set and said that the peppers were specially good. Gyoza are almost certainly made on premises as seem different from other places, and Mishy loved them. She did not like the miso soup, saying it was bland and had no flavour; I noticed plenty of flavour, but when it cooled off  was reminiscent of milk. Udon soup had a lovely broth and was delicious; although it was indicated as not being beef it tasted like it was a mild beef broth. Takoyaki was very good and flavourful, well, for takoyaki at least.

For dessert there is strawberry, vanilla, and green tea ice cream. Mishy found them to be rather bland and I tend to agree that the flavour was not intense, but it didn't stop me from ordering seconds. With the included AYCD pop, Koke was quite a good value and I certainly enjoyed lunch there.

Rating: 9 – 9.5 / 10