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| - My fiancee' took me here for dinner on my birthday last Saturday night. I was pretty excited because I had not been to a Benihana in over 20 years. We had reservations for 7:00 pm and arrived on time. They were not ready to seat us and left us to stand in the front, so we told them we were going to the bar for a drink. Not only did we get seated late after everyone else was already at the table enjoying drinks and conversation, but we had saved our appetites for this occasion and were starving. We finally got our little bowl of soup and then the small salad, but our chef did not arrive for a long time. He was very Caucasian with blonde hair (not Japanese/Oriental), little personality and either very new or having a bad night, because he did not do the knife tricks like the others and was totally inefficient on the grill. He cut each individual item one-at-a-time into bite-size pieces, which was actually painful to watch. This may be restaurant policy, but he cooked the vegetables first and I did not want to eat them alone, so they were cold long before we got our protein. We were half-way into the meal when I had to request the rice that comes with all entrees and no one had gotten--although Mike ordered fried rice and he got that early on. I had steak and lobster and the food was good, but not better than other places [and I missed the butter with my lobster :-)]. There was no particular flavor except salt and pepper. The whole reason to go to Benihana and sit around a teppanyaki table is for an experienced Chef to entertain with their tricks and jokes during dinner. We felt very let down. Our meal took two hours, and the table next to us was on their salad course when we arrived, yet they were done and gone about an hour before us. Someone obviously knew it was a bad experience because after the tabs were delivered, a man came around and collected them, returning them back with a 20% discount. I will say our male server was very pleasant and attentive with drinks, but all-in-all a disappointing birthday dinner.
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