Atlas Restaurant Group to unveil new teppanyaki room inside Azumi

The Harbor East sushi restaurant’s new teppanyaki room will open Oct. 6, Atlas CEO Alex Smith said Monday. The $1 million addition, which highlights fresh seafood cooked on an iron griddle, was inspired by a 2018 trip to Japan.

Smith said he and a group of Atlas employees explored several teppanyaki restaurants while abroad and found a culinary experience beyond the Benihana-style offerings that Americans are already accustomed to. The Japanese teppanyaki grills offered up fresh snapper, live lobster and seasonal vegetables “as a way to show how fresh the product was,” he said.

He hopes to replicate the experience in Baltimore with seafood options like lobster in shiso butter, live sea scallops, Skull Island shrimp and Chilean sea bass with a miso glaze. Land-based offerings will include Jidori chicken, a crispy skin duck breast and Miyazaki steak with garlic and wasabi. The teppanyaki room will also offer a truffle-and-mushroom hot pot, sashimi, specialty sushi rolls and wine or sake pairings for $50 a person.

Diners can also order à la carte specials like crispy skin salmon with yuzu beurre blanc or a foie gras accompanied by a port wine reduction, peanuts, brioche and cherry jam.

The new space will seat 32 people and will be available by reservation only. The room, to the right of the main Azumi dining area, is space repurposed from the former Wit & Wisdom restaurant inside the Four Seasons hotel, which has since been transformed into a Latin American dining concept, Maximon, also owned by the Atlas Restaurant Group.

The space will be decorated in the same style as Azumi, with matching chairs and brick on the walls, along with the addition of framed shots of Japanese scenery from photographer Peter Lik.

Azumi, one of 10 restaurants and bars that Atlas owns and operates in Baltimore, will mark its fifth anniversary in December.

The Harbor East sushi restaurant’s new teppanyaki room will open Oct. 6, Atlas CEO Alex Smith said Monday. The $1 million addition, which highlights fresh seafood cooked on an iron griddle, was inspired by a 2018 trip to Japan.

Smith said he and a group of Atlas employees explored several teppanyaki restaurants while abroad and found a culinary experience beyond the Benihana-style offerings that Americans are already accustomed to. The Japanese teppanyaki grills offered up fresh snapper, live lobster and seasonal vegetables “as a way to show how fresh the product was,” he said.

He hopes to replicate the experience in Baltimore with seafood options like lobster in shiso butter, live sea scallops, Skull Island shrimp and Chilean sea bass with a miso glaze. Land-based offerings will include Jidori chicken, a crispy skin duck breast and Miyazaki steak with garlic and wasabi. The teppanyaki room will also offer a truffle-and-mushroom hot pot, sashimi, specialty sushi rolls and wine or sake pairings for $50 a person.

Diners can also order à la carte specials like crispy skin salmon with yuzu beurre blanc or a foie gras accompanied by a port wine reduction, peanuts, brioche and cherry jam.

The new space will seat 32 people and will be available by reservation only. The room, to the right of the main Azumi dining area, is space repurposed from the former Wit & Wisdom restaurant inside the Four Seasons hotel, which has since been transformed into a Latin American dining concept, Maximon, also owned by the Atlas Restaurant Group.

The space will be decorated in the same style as Azumi, with matching chairs and brick on the walls, along with the addition of framed shots of Japanese scenery from photographer Peter Lik.

Azumi, one of 10 restaurants and bars that Atlas owns and operates in Baltimore, will mark its fifth anniversary in December.