Benihana’s is not your everyday restaurant. It’s more like an experience. They offer Japanese cuisine ranging from seafood, steaks, chicken, and even sushi rolls. This is a chain restaurant that is located in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It is more of an upscale kind of restaurant and along with that comes some higher prices. I am going to walk you through my most recent experience at Benihana’s.
Me and my fiancé went there for a dinner one night on a week day. We made reservations for 6 p.m. The restaurant wasn’t very busy when we got there. I attributed this to the fact that they close for 3 hours between the lunch and dinner rush, so they had just reopened again at 5:30 p.m. We checked in with the hostess and were seated at a table with 6 other people. The tables hold 8 people each. There is a grill on one long side of the table and patrons are seated in a horseshoe like shape on the remaining 3 sides of the table.
Once each table is full, the grill is turned on. After we were seated, our waiter came by shortly to take our drink orders. After the drinks were brought out, our orders were taken. Soon after, everyone received their first course of the meal, which was Japanese onion soup. After that, we were given a tossed salad with a ginger dressing on it. As we were eating out salads, the chef arrived at our table and double checked everyone’s order that he had was correct. He brought with him a cart full of fresh meat and vegetables.
The grill was heated up by now and he began his show and to cook our dinner. The next part of the meal is fresh grilled shrimp for everyone. He gave everyone 2 dipping sauces for their dinner. While he was cooking the shrimp, he cut their tails off and was flipping in the air. He caught them in the top of his chef hat, his coat pocket and with his spatula. It was quite entertaining and fun to watch. He played with the food the entire time he was cooking it. Another trick he did was to take rings from an onion and stack them up on one another, descending in size as another one was added to the stack. Once the stack was almost cone shaped and just a small opening remained on the top, he poured some oil in the top of it and let it get hot.
He them poured water on top of that which made lots of steam come out the top. He pushed the stack across the grill and said “choo choo” as if it was a train. It was funny. While he was building the train, he began to cook parts of some of the patron’s meals. Not everyone’s meal is done at and served at the exact same time. Everyone did get their rice at the same time though. Then the meat and seafood part of the entrees were cooked. We even ordered a half of order of sushi rolls, which were brought out to us by our waiter while our meal was being cooked. After everyone’s meal was done, which took about 35 minutes from the time the chef got to our table until the time he left, he cleaned the grill and left with his now empty cart.
I thought it was very entertaining to see your whole meals cooked right before your very eyes. I liked how there were several courses to the meal, yet they were in perfect proportion as to not get you too full for your main entree. There were several birthdays being celebrated at Benihana’s while we were there. Employee would gather around the special birthday person and sing them a birthday song and give them a special hat to wear and take their picture. They also rec’d a free birthday dessert treat. When I originally called to make our reservation, I was asked if we were celebrating a special occasion or not. We weren’t, just wanted to have a nice dinner.
All together, we had a soft drink, a mix drink, an appetizer, 2 entrees and a dessert to split and our bill came to about $80.00. We don’t normally spend this much money on a dinner for two, but it was a nice treat. It was entertaining as well. The only part that is a bit odd, is how you share a table with people you don’t know. We were there for about an hour and a half, and if there is someone at your table that you don’t particularly care for, that can seem like forever! Overall though, I would return to this restaurant. Benihana’s also offers a full ball including Sake drinks. It’s a great place for not only couples and family’s to go, but they also can accommodate larger parties as well.
