Samurai's Hurricane

Family dining around a flame

By Brad Allen on January 24, 2008

While it’s great to have brothers to give me wedgies, teach me about heavy metal and take slapshots at my face when they play street hockey, I’m especially thankful that I have sisters. Everything I know about girls I learned from them (and from watching “The Facts of Life”). My sisters raised me to be sensitive to the plight of the fairer sex; I learned what to do (girls like it when you have clean nails) and what not to do (never give flowers after a fight). Most of all, they gave me an appreciation of natural fiber blends, the importance of good tailoring and gossip.



This past weekend my sisters, Tator Tot and I experienced the grand opening of Samurai’s Japanese Steakhouse in Spanaway. Jerry and Debbie Halsey’s old world Japanese, 10,000-square-foot teppanyaki restaurant sports 14 grills, and my family commanded one-half of a grill, laughing hysterically and catching Chef Mike’s food flips in our mouths.



Over grilled steak, lobster and chicken, we decided to solve all our problems in a way that keeps brainless daytime TV hosts like Oprah and Dr. Phil stocked with semi-retarded guests who take out a second mortgage on the trailer in order to scrape up enough money for airfare so that they can be humiliated and, as Dr. Phil puts it, “bitch-slapped” on syndicated TV: We buried our feelings in bathroom humor, booze and way-too-much food.



After dinner, we carried the conversation to the bar — a giant red-glowing temple inside the restaurant. Inside, over tall, glowing Hurricane’s —vodka, gin, light rum, Barcadi 151 rum, amaretto, triple sec, grapefruit and pineapple juices and grenadine syrup — I learned to never, ever, wear open-toed summer slides with tights. Good to know.



[Samurai’s Japanese Steakhouse, 19321 Mountain Hwy. E., Spanaway, 253.846.5557]