The first piece of chicken hit me right between the eyes before plopping neatly onto my plate. Between gusts of shocked laughter, I took a proffered towel from our smiling hibachi chef, knocked back a swallow of sake, and caught the next bite of flying fowl neatly in my mouth. Others, like my 7-year-old dining companion, were not so lucky. One, two, three bits of chicken sailed over his head, past his left ear, and - inexplicably - under his raised right arm. So ended one of the most enjoyable and entertaining teppanyaki meals I've had in recent memory.

Hibachi restaurants, like the 5-month-old Kobe Steak & Sushi House in Greece, are having something of a renaissance. As the amount of money families have to spend on going out to dinner has declined, eating out has returned to what it was a generation ago: something done on special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries. And diners want some bang for their bucks. For families with kids, that increasingly means a visit to a Japanese steakhouse, where the meal begins with a burst of fire and is punctuated with the musical clatter of knives and spatulas against a sizzling steel flat-top.

At Kobe, the hibachi chefs are masters of the art. They engage in the usual hijinks involving acrobatic eggs and onion volcanoes. They do things with knives that would make a safety inspector faint dead away. But they also add in some relatively novel gags: a "peeing" sake dispenser that makes pretty much every kid (and parent) break down giggling, an apparently full bottle of soy sauce that convinces everyone in the area that their clothes are in jeopardy when the chef inadvertently squeezes it (the "sauce" is actually a piece of cleverly loaded black string). And, of course, they'll toss bits of chicken or shrimp into the mouths of the willing. It's dinner and theater all in one.

The food at dinner theaters is notoriously mediocre. At Kobe it's pretty darn good. The hibachi chefs use very high-quality ingredients, season them lightly, enrich them with nearly indecent amounts of butter, and cook everything just so. It's not the most exciting food you'll ever eat, but it is crowd-pleasing, fresh, and perfectly good. The beef is tender and cooked exactly to order, teriyaki chicken has a very pretty glaze, the scallops are fat and lovely, and even the vegetable-studded fried rice has a nice smoky undertone to it (hibachi chicken $14.95, steak $18.50, scallops $18.50).

Walk into Kobe Steak & Sushi on any given night, and the hostess will herd you toward the hibachi tables. That's not a bad choice, and in nine cases out of 10 her assumption that most diners are headed that direction is correct. If you can drag your attention away from fireballs and knives for a few minutes, though, you'll notice that there's a sushi bar tucked at the back of Kobe's main dining room; and what's happening back there is even more exciting than the tableside antics of the hibachi grill.

Take a seat at sushi chef Kevin Chi's bar and he'll start by asking you what you like. Chi's first question to me was whether I liked oysters. I've never had oysters at a sushi bar, and I was a bit puzzled, but curious enough to see what he was going to do. Chi brought out four large oysters, cracked them open, loosened them in their shells and proceeded to layer flavors on top of them: a bit of chopped scallion, a dash of hot sauce, a sprinkling of tobiko (pickled fish roe), a drizzle of ginger-lemon mignonette, and a couple grains of sea salt ($13). I'm picky about my shellfish, but these were simply the best oysters I've had this year. Meaty, briny, plump and bursting with flavor, they were pleasure to chew and linger over, savoring the flavors as they developed.

Seeing that I was a happy man, Chi followed this with a plate of thinly sliced yellowtail, each piece topped with paper-thin sections of jalapeno and smoked grape tomato dressed with a tomato and caper broth ($10). I was prepared for the fish to be lost amidst so many flavors, but its texture and a bit of brine stood out nicely, complementing the umami-rich tomatoes.

Next came a roll that was a miracle of the sushi-chef's art. Chi flattened a piece of ahi tuna into a uniform thickness of about an eighth of an inch and then used this sheet of fish as the wrapper for a roll containing lobster and seaweed salads, spicy tuna, and a slice each of avocado and ripe mango, the whole thing dressed with a bit of wasabi mayonnaise ($15). I was hard pressed to decide whether I was more impressed with the presentation, the silky texture of the roll, or the eye-popping balance of flavors.

More rolls followed, including an "amazing roll" topped with pepper-crusted ahi ($13) that stands out in my memory. But the highlight of the evening was my final course: a whole oyster doused with a bit of horseradish, sake, and hot sauce, topped with a thick slab of uni (sea urchin roe) and a sprinkling of lemon-ginger mignonette and tobiko ($10). Not normally a fan of uni, I can say without hesitation that the fireworks in this shot-glass-sized concoction far outshone even the biggest burst of flame erupting from the nearby hibachi tables. Stunned, and giggling (I did a lot of that at Kobe), I thanked Chi profusely and vowed to return soon with reinforcements to try out the rest of his impressive and exciting repertoire.

To find Kobe Steak and Sushi House in City Newspaper's online Restaurant Guide - including a map, user reviews, and more - click here.

Kobe Steak House

2496 W. Ridge Road No. 700

(585) 225-8555

Lunch: Mon-Fri 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Sat noon-3 p.m. Diner: Mon-Thu 4:30-10 p.m., Fri 4:30-11 p.m., Sat 3-11 p.m., Sun noon-9:30 p.m.