Lori Phillips, her husband, Nathan Phillips, and her friend Molly Lim sit around a long wooden table as their chef emerges from the kitchen with a cart of ingredients. He greets the three and pours oil on the already hot griddle, sending flames bursting into the air.
The orange flare reflects in the eyes of the mesmerized customers, who watch as the chef flicks his spatula left and right until the chicken, noodles, shrimp, steak and vegetables are all perfectly cooked. In moments, the customers have plates full of hot food fresh from the griddle.
Goten of Japan, a hibachi and sushi bar at 104 Old Amherst Road in Sunderland, has been serving up dinner — and a show — since 1972. It is best known for its hibachi, which manager Bryan Kim estimates makes up 90 percent of its business and features the restaurant’s signature noodles.
The restaurant was founded by Toyoko DiRusso and her husband, Donnie, in 1972. Having come from Japan, Toyoko DiRusso remembered a restaurant in Tokyo that cooked steak on a grill and was inspired to incorporate the same technique into her own restaurant.
At the time, Goten of Japan was the first hibachi restaurant in Massachusetts, according to Bryan Kim. However, as other hibachi restaurants popped up serving fried rice, the DiRussos decided to pursue a different course.
“Donnie DiRusso decided he wanted noodles, when all other restaurants did fried rice,” said Jerry Duprey, Goten’s bookkeeper. “It took them, like, a year to come up with a recipe for cooking noodles on the grill, which is not an easy task. He developed the recipe we still use today.”
The current owner, Bryan Kim’s mother, Haesoon Kim, acquired the business with her husband, DooSung Kim in January 1996. DooSung Kim had worked at the restaurant as a chef and was interested in starting a business with Haesoon, who had worked in her aunt’s restaurant in Japan.
“He knew the ins and the outs of a business,” Bryan Kim said. “Restaurants weren’t entirely unfamiliar to us.”
Over the years, the Kims have expanded the menu and the building, adding a sushi bar in 2008, as well as a drink bar, larger kitchen and more seating. A patio sits on the eastern side of the building near the Route 116 entrance, and Haesoon Kim hopes to one day add a Japanese garden featuring a pond, fish, a walking bridge and outdoor hibachi griddles.
“That’s my dream, but it’s a lot of work,” she said. One day, when Haesoon Kim retires, her son will take over as owner to “keep Goten’s legacy going.”
Bryan Kim said that while many University of Massachusetts parents and travelers from Vermont and New York dine at Goten of Japan for the first time, as many as 80 percent of the restaurant’s customers are regulars. Duprey said the restaurant’s large tables are suitable for corporate meetings and birthday parties and cited a family for whom Goten of Japan was a birthday tradition.
“Every year they had to come here for their birthday parties, and now they’re coming here for their wedding parties,” Duprey said. “It’s multi-generational.”
During their busy season, fall through spring, Bryan Kim estimated the restaurant serves as many as 350 meals on a Saturday and 80 to 100 meals a day on average.
“It’s a unique dining experience,” Duprey said of the hibachi. “People enjoy meeting other people and come in just for that.”
The tables, which seat between eight and 14 customers, often bring strangers together to share a meal. Other customers appreciate being able to meet their cook.
“It’s a different atmosphere than a lot of restaurants,” said Lori Phillips of Orange. “You get to interact with your cook and see your meal prepared.”
Phillips said she started coming to Goten of Japan 30 years ago.
“My mom would have dinner meetings, so this is where my dad would take me for dinner,” she said. Phillips always orders the hibachi chicken without fail.
The restaurant’s servers bring out soup, salad and rice before the chef emerges from the kitchen to cook the main course, and then there is Snow’s Ice Cream for dessert. Hibachi, Duprey said, requires the restaurant obtain premium ingredients.
“You’re seeing it before it’s cooked, so its got to be perfect,” he said.
The restaurant orders from Arnold’s Meats and Masse’s Seafood of Chicopee. Bryan Kim said he’s even traveled to Boston to ensure the restaurant has the freshest ingredients. However, with the abundance of local farms, Kim said he also tries to incorporate plenty of local produce.
“They’re very generous in portion, and the food is always very fresh,” said customer Molly Lim of Lexington, Ky., and a former Amherst resident.
“For certain customers that do have a keen eye, they do notice that we use premium ingredients,” Duprey said.
Before serving the main course, the chefs build a “volcano” out of onion slices and asks customers if they’d like to try catching a piece of shrimp in their mouths. Bryan Kim said it takes about two years to master the hibachi cooking performance.
The restaurant has a full staff of around 25, Bryan Kim said, with eight chefs. At the end of the night, all the employees receive a meal, giving chefs a chance to test their hibachi skills in front of their fellow employees before going on stage in front of customers.
Following the meal, the show continues as servers wrap the leftover food in tinfoil for customers to take with them, artistically twisting the foil into the shape of swans, crabs, whales and more.
Over the years, Goten of Japan’s performance has won the restaurant multiple Valley Advocate Best in the Valley awards in the Japanese restaurant category. The restaurant’s recipe for tangy ginger salad dressing was also featured on the cover of Bon Appétit:
Salad:
Shredded iceberg lettuce
Sliced mushrooms
Red bell pepper strips
Dressing:
One-quarter cup of fresh ginger, chopped and peeled
One-quarter cup of chopped onions
One-quarter cup of chopped celery
One-quarter cup of water
Three tablespoons of distilled white vinegar
Three tablespoons of vegetable oil
Two tablespoons of lemon peel, finely chopped (yellow part only)
Two tablespoons of tomato purée
Half a teaspoon of sugar
Directions
Combine all ingredients —other than the lettuce, mushrooms and bell peppers — in a blender. Blend on high for about two minutes, until smooth.
Season the dressing with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve over the lettuce, mushrooms and bell peppers.
Recipe makes roughly two to three servings.