How to host a HIBACHI PARTY

Fire up the coals and put the playlist on repeat. Backyard get-togethers are taking on a Japanese flavour and LEE TRAN LAM has the prep sorted.

- LEE TRAN LAM

So you want to throw a hibachi party? First you’d think it would involve a literal hibachi – but that’s not entirely true. The original hibachi is a “fire bowl” that dates back to Japan’s Heian period (794-1185 AD) and was used to heat rooms and warm hands. Cooking wasn’t their original purpose. Today, though, the word “hibachi” has been mistranslated by Westerners to mean any type of Japanese barbecue – whether the cooking is done with a konro, irori or shichirin grill. “It can be a bit confusing,” says Kei Tokiwa from Sydney’s Amuro sake bar.

The term “hibachi party” can cause head-scratching, too (especially with Americans using it to describe private teppanyaki gatherings), but, semantics aside, it essentially involves cooking over coal in a highly social way. And that’s something Australians can get on board with.

“In summer, back at my hometown in Okayama, we’d always have a yakiniku party on the hibachi, inviting friends, neighbours and relatives close by,” says Meg Tanaka from Melbourne’s Cibi. In springtime, they’d sit under cherry blossom trees at night and grill a yakitori or yakiniku feast. “What a celebration!”

Although Tanaka describes cooking with a hibachi, she clarifies that she means a shichirin, a portable charcoal stove that’s also sold at her Japanese café and store. Charring yakitori-style skewers or thin yakiniku-like cuts of meat over a barbecue are low-key but fun ways to keep everyone fed while socialising outdoors.