I can confidently say this is one of the best kitchen upgrades I’ve ever made. The Teppanyaki hot plate feels like it was made for serious home chefs—it heats up fast, holds temperature incredibly well, and the precise control (from 320°F to 430°F) makes all the difference whether you’re searing steak or gently crisping up okonomiyaki.The 6.6mm cladding plate gives it serious heft and quality—you can tell this isn’t your average electric griddle. What really sold me is the 360° cooking design. You can literally cook from any angle, and the heat distribution is beautifully even. I’ve made crepes, smashed burgers, stir-fry, even grilled veggies, and everything comes out perfectly seared without hot spots.Clean-up is also easier than I expected, and the overall design looks sleek on my countertop. If you’re a fan of Japanese teppan-style cooking or just want pro-level flat top performance at home, this is a total winner.

I'm in love with this hot plate. It cooks everything to perfection. We have made french toast and pancakes every weekend with it. I truly feel like I'm at a restaurant when I am eating. I now know why food tastes better at restaurants and it's not because your not cooking. It truly is what you're cooking on that makes all of the difference. The Teppanyaki is easy to clean and use. Even when my husband cooks he cleans it which if you know my husband is saying something.

We used this Teppanyaki to test the cooking potential of 4 different meats and seafoods common to Korean BBQ: Sirloin strip, Beef short ribs, thin sliced pork belly, and shrimp. We were soooo impressed with the results, and consider this unit of very high quality and easily worth the price point. Several notes below:What this grill does REALLY well:SET UP: This unit is basically three pieces that easily fit together - the base/electrical unit, the drip tray, and the cooking surface. Set up takes 2 minutes at the most - and then you'll be cooking! The unit comes to temperature quickly, making meal prep less onerous than regular grilling.CLEAN UP: Clean up on this thing is an absolute BREEZE! As we watched cut after cut of meat, which had been marinaded in soy and brown sugar, sear and bubble on the cooking surface I was silently rueing how hard it was likely going to be to get that surface clean ... I was totally wrong! We initially used regular water to "deglaze" the cooking surface while it was still hot, and then gave it a wash and gentle scrub once cool. The cooking surface and drip tray detach from the unit separately making each piece easy to access for full cleaning. Every bit of cooked on marinade, meat, glaze, etc. washed right off, with almost no effort. I was SOOO impressed. That alone makes this item worth the money - if I could buy a set of cooking pans in this aluminum cladded steel compound, I'd do it immediately!COOKING THIN STRIP MEAT: We used 4 types of meat and seafood on our initial trial of this grill: thin sliced sirloin, thin slice beef short ribs, thin sliced pork belly, and thawed shrimp. All four cooked up well, but the thinner sliced the meats, the better. Even at the highest temp setting (430 F), the thicker meats and shrimp took a fairly long time to cook - and the shrimp in particularly didn't have impressive quality once finished. However, the thin strips of sirloin and pork belly were AHH MAZZING. That's a key feature of this unit.MAKING COOKING EASY AND FUN: We bought this unit because of its potential to make meal prep and enjoyment much more fun and social of an affair - and we were not disappointed! We set the grill up on our pool patio, via its easy electrical plug in, and were all laughing, cooking and eating in no time. This unit encourages the social and engaging meal experience that is at the heart of all Korean BBQ.THINGS IT COULD DO A BIT BETTER:These are small criticisms, but they did impact our experience with the unit.DRIP TRAY VERY SMALL: This unit really would have benefited from a larger drip tray, so that cooking oils and juices could have been more reliably spatula'ed off the surface. The instructions actually recommend to use paper towels continuously during the cooking process to blot excess liquid off the cooking surface - which is just not great design when you are cooking liquidy, marinaded meat that throws a lot of juice and waste. This was a messy and wasteful way to keep the grill from "drowning in its own juices." A larger drip tray better designed to siphon off cooking waste would have really improved the usage of the unit.SLIGHTLY UNEVEN COOKING: Cooking surface did well but didn't offer perfectly uniform cooking across its breadth. It seemed to suffer from cooler temps on one side than the other, leading to mixed results when cooking.NOT SCRATCH PROOF: This unit claims to offer a scratch free cooking surface that you can actually cut upon - we did use the surface this way, cut meat on it several times, and did notice surface knicks from knives after final clean. I would be sparing in use of sharp tools or knives on the surface, even though instructions clearly say this is ok!Overall, we highly recommend this unit - with small caveats. It provides a quick, easy and fun way to socialize and cook dinner at the same time - as long as you choose cuts of meat (preferably purchased pre sliced at an Asian grocery) that are designed to cook up on this type of surface.

I got this Balmuda hot cooking plate for my son who enjoys cooking excellent food, eating his own and others cooking and in the mix, just entertaining friends in his home. It seemed that this would be an excellent tool for him to expand into some new cooking styles and food preparations, or at least for making those food preparations easier.This will obviously be a cooking and food preparation style which will require learning and observations and more learning to master for best results but he has found that at the 400 setting it worked super well with his steaks, providing a beautiful and even sear, with a little char and a lot of Maillard crust. Those were his first efforts with some friends for a game night, combining entertainment cooking, great food and camaraderie. Our plans for this weekend will include salmon and veggies.And onward from there.He works at at pizzeria and so had access to some equipment to evaluate temperature accuracy and heating speed. He noted that the plate heated quickly and settled at the 400 setting without overshoot. During the cooking that he did it retained the heat within a narrow temperature variance. In his words, excellent job.This is obviously different than most of the other cooking which he has mastered so he will learn how best to prepare, cook and cleanup with the single hot plate. This provides him a top notch tool to go about that.I expect that many owners would think that this hot plate will be underutilized for awhile. Perhaps. However, like all good tools, once learned or experienced they can be wonderful to have and share the benefits with others.And the skills to create good cuisines never need be wasted.An observation is that because of the way that this hot plate is constructed all cleanup will be mostly with wipe-down cleaning. The temperature control knob is in a place where it will collect oils since it gets any spits and splatters from oil and cooking. With a lot of use this area may benefit from simple shielding to reduce that accumulation. Most other hot plates I looked at have controls located on a vertical panel rather than horizontal so that it isn't direct line of spatter. I expect for that reason, especially so since this control unit is integral and not removable.