True, Kingston doesn’t have as varied and robust a restaurant scene as, say, New York. But here, just as there, restaurants come and go with Darwinian exigency. Astute restaurant-goers here, just as those anywhere else in the world, are drawn to the new, the intriguing and the promising. Which is why, in their bid to stay ahead of the competition, some of the buzz phrases being crooned by local restaurateurs in recent years can be boiled down to “new and unheard of” or “nothing like it in Kingston”.

One of the latest restaurants to bid for the patronage of Jamaica’s increasingly savvy restaurant-going set is Royal Palace in Kingston’s Liguanea area. The Royal Palace offers both Japanese and Chinese menus. But a “fusing of cuisines” is nothing new to the Kingston restaurant scene. Dishes themselves being fused (a Jamaican-influenced Chinese dish, for instance) is borderline trite by now. And the opening of Spring Roll in New Kingston is the latest example of a restaurant that offers totally different menus under one roof (boasting Chinese, Japanese and Thai menu options). No, the “something new” Royal Palace has to offer isn’t a type of food, but a style of cooking said food. And that style is teppanyaki.

If you are not sure what teppanyaki is, you may have seen it in a movie. It’s a style of Japanese cuisine that allows patrons to watch a chef (usually with very deft hands) prepare their meal on an iron grill right in front of them. Seeing your steak sizzle and shrink right before your eyes doesn’t necessarily make it taste any better (in fact, the magic of seeing your meal suddenly appear from the mysterious interior of the restaurant kitchen completely evaporates), but it does make for a delightful show (as anyone who has ever seen scallops sliced while airborne then falling onto one’s plate can attest).

Devon Kerr, one of the managers of Royal Palace, is very proud of this new addition to dining out in Kingston.

“We came up with the teppanyaki to offer something new. But we also wanted to create a nice atmosphere for people to come and have a great time while having a nice, quiet place to eat.”

Kerr has experience in managing Japanese fare — he was once manager of the East Japanese restaurant in The Marketplace, a restaurant that won the 2009 Jamaica Observer Food Awards for best lunch spot. His mission at Royal Palace, however, is to take the dining experience to another level of enjoyability and comfort.

“I want to make this restaurant the best,” he says. “Quality and great service — that’s important, but also, in the process, creating something different and appealing.”

The teppanyaki isn’t set to open for a few weeks, but, in the meantime, the inviting Chinese portion of the restaurant has already been open for two months and is doing quite well, he says. And we can see why. The ambiance strives for the quiet, the scenic and the traditional. There is a man-made pond surrounded by plants at the entrance. The carpet is bright red with lively bursts of gold. Classically cinched sepia curtains adorn breezy white drapes, and smartly attired servers move about unobtrusively.

“The service is so attractive here,” says Renée Burgher, who was out to lunch to celebrate her father’s 85th birthday. “The servers were very attentive.”

And the food’s not bad either. In fact, the Peking duck we were treated to was among the best we’ve had in some time — tender, moist and seasoned just enough for the taste of the duck to be appropriate — it was certainly well prepared.

Quality, Kerr stresses, is what he is striving for on all levels.

“At the end of the day, a lot of Jamaicans are familiar with [East Asian] cuisine. You have to come with quality — quality food and quality service.”

–Kedon Willis