STEPH DEROSA: SLOW BURN >>>

Spicy Chicken and Mushroom
Gikan Teriyaki #7
Price: $8.95
Burn Factor: Three out of four Molotov cocktails

So I ventured to Gikan Teriyaki #7 for this week’s Slow Burn. What’s funny is trying to imagine the Gikan Teriyaki #2, #3, or #5.  Are they all the same? Is the original Gikan Teriyaki #1 all uppity because it was the original?  Do they really own seven of them, or is it because six other Korean couples took the name “Gikan Teriyaki”?  Questions like these haunt me at night as I try to sleep.  Yes, that’s how lame my brain is.  Look, yours would be drained as well if you had to work amongst men who wear pajamas to the office and overuse played-out pop-culture phrases like “You go girl!” Ugh.

Gikan Teriyaki calls it like they see it.  Their dish “Spicy Chicken and Mushroom” is exactly that.  For those of you who have already checked out for your Memorial Day holiday, let me explain: It is nothing but chicken pieces, mushrooms, and spicy sauce.  None of that bullshit some other competingteriyaki joints might put in the dish as fillers, like water chestnuts.  Water chestnuts in a teriyaki dish are like croutons in a salad â€" cheap, tasteless, and utterly useless.

As for the slow burn factor, and as with pretty much any spicy Asian dish, the sooner you eat it before it cools down, the fiery the pepper heat.  As it filled my belly, the Spicy Chicken and Mushroom plate from Gikan Teriyaki set a quaint blaze to my mouth and kept me happy. 

[Gikan Teriyaki #7, 900 Meridian E., Milton, 253-952-3473]