Fast Furious Japanese Grill Zooms Into Upper Greenville

The Asian food invasion of Upper Greenville continues with the recent opening of Fast Furious Japanese Grill. Joining Pho is for Lovers, BBBop and Roll n' Go in dishing up fast casual Southeast Asian fare, Fast Furious' third DFW location adds its own twist on quick rice and noodle dishes.

Fast Furious capitalizes on the decade-old movie The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The menu headers are auto-themed sections: "Ignition" for appetizers, “Tune Up” for bowls, “Fuel” for drinks, and so on. Inside, lamp fixtures dangle amidst a pipe network capped with valves and pressure gauges. The space, formerly a stone-floored yogurt shop, is still uncomfortably loud, but since Fast Furious specializes in to-go meals, most patrons won't suffer the echoing din of the kitchen noise and Korean greetings too long.

That's right — Fast Furious Japanese Grill greets you in Korean when you arrive. Their “Hybrid” section includes Korean dishes like marinated beef short ribs, and their specialty bowls include bibimbap and kimchi fried rice. In general, the Fast Furious menu has a pan-Asian feel rather than being distinctly one culture or another.

For appetizers, you can find Flying Chicken (a saucy kabob) and jalapeno poppers alongside the standard staples of edamame, gyoza and seaweed salad. For your main, try one of their Tune Up kitchen bowls, which are made to order. Their most popular dish is the Hawaiian Bowl, a pile of raw salmon or ahi tuna with mango, avocado, lettuce and green bell peppers on an enormous helping of sushi rice that could feed eight.

Fast Furious is similar to its neighbor down the street, BBBop, in that it lets you build your own bowl. If there’s not a kitchen bowl that strikes your fancy, check out the “Furious” section: select your starch and protein, then let the staff behind the counter quickly assemble it. Unlike BBBop, some of the ingredients are already cooked. You'll get your food faster, but the noodles might have a distinctive heat lamp flavor to them.

The meat is decent quality and the price for the volume of food is reasonable. Fast Furious is not the most original concept to enter this stretch of Greenville Avenue, but it's worth checking out the next time you have a craving for some hibachi and a dump truck of rice.

Fast Furious Japanese Grill, 5915 Greenville Ave., 972-290-0654