Benihana Birthday
My boyfriend cooked a teppanyaki dinner for five friends at Benihana and you can too!
Earlier this summer I came across an article by Eater correspondent Jaya Saxena detailing her experience cooking dinner for friends at famed teppanyaki restaurant Benihana.
I thought it was either a spoof or special access report until I came upon this:
“For the low, low price of $300, you can sign up for [Benihana’s] “Be the Chef” program, which provides an hour-long training session that prepares you to wow and amaze five guests, to whom you will then serve shrimp and steak and chicken fried rice with the background assistance of a professional.”
Oh. My. God.
I burst into my boyfriend’s office, jumped wildly up and down like a crazed fangirl that scored tickets to the [insert big-name pop star] concert and announced that I had found the perfect gift. He was going to become Benihana Boyfriend, Benihana Birthday Boy…a real-deal Benihana chef.
Not only would he be able to fulfill his goal of working in a professional kitchen, he would get to do so while indulging in dad-style humor and performing circus tricks for a captive audience.
Sometimes dreams do come true.
When I called our local Benihana, a valley girl-accented host answered, “Konnichiwa, thank you for calling Benihana” and turned me over to manager Lance, whom I peppered with questions:
Does the party of six include my chef-boyfriend? Yes.
When is this experience available? Any day of the week.
Can my boyfriend bring his own knives? [Very long pause; puzzled response] Sure, I don’t see why not?
With two months until the big day, I’d casually drop Benihana Birthday into conversation to gauge reactions. Everyone became giddy with glee as they recalled their favorite highlights: the onion volcano! the choo choo train! the beating heart!
As a patron of a hibachi spot unique to my hometown called Maya of Japan I knew all about the classic acrobatics involving shrimp tails, spatulas and sesame seed shakers, but I was unfamiliar with Benihana’s trademark tricks.
Clearly I was in for the thrill of a lifetime (to be honest, this experience was as much about my enjoyment as it was my boyfriend’s).
The Big Day
On the way downtown our Uber driver, a recent Dallas transplant, looked in the rear view mirror and remarked, “Benihana, huh, are you guys aware of the dress code?” Outfitted with our most odor-resistant (read: decidedly unfashionable) apparel, we crossed our fingers that Dallas rules didn’t apply in Chicago (they didn’t).
We made our way to the Hancock Tower’s concourse level and announced ourselves at the host stand. I was still in disbelief that the apprenticeship was real, yet out came Chef Raymundo in full Benihana regalia—branded chef’s coat, apron and towering red toque—to greet my boyfriend (who from this point on I’ll refer to as BB for Benihana Boyfriend) and begin the one-hour session.
A Moment of Doubt and Some Liquid Courage
BB came out of training looking like he’d seen a ghost.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t think I can do it. I have to prepare an entire meal, tell jokes and do tricks. Holy shit. What have I signed up for?”
Luckily, our friends had planned an interlude at the Signature Lounge (little did we know this would be our final trip to the storied bar on the Hancock’s 96th floor). This was nothing a little liquid courage couldn’t fix.
One whiskey in, BB notified us he wouldn’t be tossing shrimp into guests’ mouths.
“WHY NOT?!?!” we barked. Wasn’t tossing shrimp into guests’ mouths the entire point of dining at Benihana?
He signed a waiver reading: “Please do not throw or toss food into anyone’s mouth, plate, etc.”1
Then he confessed he had the urge to cut and run—after all, he’d completed his training and had his branded apron and toque in hand—but we would hear nothing of it.
So we plied BB with another drink and changed the topic.
The Main Event: Act I
The manager led us to a cooktop table in the middle of Benihana’s main dining room. Based on the Eater article, I assumed they’d hide us away in a private room, but no, this was going down front and center.
BB awkwardly stood off to the side drinking an Asahi (more liquid courage) while the rest of us supped on soup and salad.
The soup’s sodium-forward broth was punctuated with sliced button mushrooms, scallions and canned fried onions (a la Durkee). By the time I slurped my first spoonful the onions had lost their crunch and puffed up like bloated earthworms.2
The salad was a mix of crunchless iceberg, eerily round cherry tomatoes, dried-out carrot slivers and shaved red cabbage. The tangy ginger dressing only slightly offset the straight-from-the-bag vibe.
Meanwhile, Chef Raymundo rolled the ingredient cart into place and bestowed upon BB a leather knife holster with the namesake flower motif (Benihana means red safflower) embossed on the brass buckle.
After this tender moment between master and apprentice, BB kicked things off with a ceremonial unsheathing of his chef’s knife, a deep bow and a scripted welcome to Benihana.
He squirted oil onto the flattop and started sauteing a mirepoix of onion, carrot and scallion. Then he slid a mass of pre-cooked rice off a white cafeteria tray onto the sizzling griddle.
BB asked, “Who wants an egg roll?”
We all eagerly nodded, though we were confused. Wasn’t he making fried rice?
He grabbed an egg, rolled it across the middle of the grill’s surface and exclaimed, “Ta-da. Egg roll.”
We laughed uproariously. Chef Raymundo gave an approving smile. My boyfriend beamed.
Then BB clumsily tried to flip the egg with his spatula into a metal prep bowl. After two failed attempts he picked it up and cracked it onto the hot surface.
With some fancy spatula slapping he mixed the egg in with the rice and vegetables and formed a heart-shaped mound.
Then he set his spatula underneath and started pulsing it up and down in a syncopated rhythm—the famous beating heart!
He scooped up some rice, placed it in a serving bowl and then flipped the entire pile in the air, catching at least some of it in the bowl.
He repeated this trick four more times and we hooped and hollered with each toss, like rowdy fans at a WWF bout after a wrestler divebombs an opponent from the top of the ring.
The rice had that classic bachelor stir-fry flavor (heavy on the Kikkoman), but the food was not why we had come to Benihana. We came for the performance.
And BB had just completed the hibachi hat trick: Dad joke, signature food formation, flipped food. Ten minutes into the performance, he was on fire.
The Main Event: Act II
Out came the raw zucchini planks and onion rings. While Raymundo readied his camera, BB used a spatula and barbecue fork to stack the sliced onion into a tower. With a quick douse of oil, vodka and flame the onion transformed into a mini Krakatoa.
Then BB scooted a zucchini wedge over to the volcano base and attempted to push the whole formation across the grill while smoke poured out of its top. A few onion rings toppled along the way but it was no matter. We all started banging our fists on the table and chanting “chugga chugga choo choo!”
Once the onion train reached the center of the grill, BB steadied it with his barbecue fork and gave us an impish look. He spun the rings around with wild abandon so that they resembled the chaotic vortex of Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil.
As I delighted in the flavor of the grilled vegetable medley, which tasted just as I remembered it from childhood—bland yet satisfying—BB laid shrimp down on the griddle.
He cut off the tails, placed his knife in his sheath and attempted the toque toss. It’s a good thing BB had twenty tails at his disposal, because it wasn’t until the eighth or ninth try that he landed the trick.
Because of how long it took BB to successfully maneuver the tails, the shrimp was pretty overcooked by the time it made it onto our plates. I can understand why Benihana chefs go through a six month training program; the ability to simultaneously perform and prepare a decent meal is something only for elite professionals.
After cooking us another round of shrimp (why more shrimp?) BB pulled a platter of steaks (portion size: one steak per person) off the cart.
While Chef Raymundo had stood in the background admiring his pupil’s work for most of the show, this was the one moment he desperately wanted to step-in. The steaks were a mere half inch thick, so if BB didn’t move quickly, they were going to take on the texture of shoe leather.
BB permitted the master to demonstrate proper slicing technique, but then he announced, “I got this” and resumed control of the grill. BB later admitted he didn’t want Chef Raymundo to shower the steaks with excessive amounts of black pepper, which he witnessed during training.
BB plated his final course—soy-bathed steak bites with mushrooms—took a bow and collapsed into one of the empty chairs, shrimp tails still in his toque.
Chef Raymundo stepped away to print our commemorative photos and BB, rarely a rule breaker, shouted out to our friend Matt, “Open up.”
He took his spatula and launched a piece of steak across the entire length of the cooktop table right into Matt’s mouth. We shrieked with delight—it was the perfect ending to a wild evening.
The Afterglow
As we stumbled out of the restaurant, full of too much food and too many drinks, we reflected on what an incredibly weird and fun night we’d had. As a newly-certified Master Teppenyaki Chef, who knows what BB will take on next.
Benihana Fun Facts
On September 18-20, 2018, our very own Chef Raymundo Mendez shattered the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for longest cooking marathon. The 42-hour cooking marathon honored the first-annual National Fried Rice Day.
Founder Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki was a champion wrestler, an avid powerboat racer and a balloonist who crossed the Pacific Ocean on a record-setting flight between Japan and California. He published a soft-core porno mag called Genesis and pleaded guilty to insider trading.
Aoki had six children, including Steve Aoki, a Grammy-nominated electro house and EDM musician and producer.
90210 actress Tori Spelling apparently slipped and sustained second- and third-degree burns on her arm while dining at a Beverly Hills Benihana in 2015. Her injuries were so severe they required skin grafts, and she reportedly sued the company for more than $25,000.
Fast and the Furious star/Ralph Lauren model Tyrese Gibson has a fully functioning Benihana-style restaurant in his backyard.
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I later learned a guest brought a wrongful death suit against Benihana on account of a chef who repeatedly winged shrimp towards her disinclined husband, resulting in a fatal neck injury.
For an excellent write-up of how un-Japanese Benihana is, read
’s “Easy, Peasy, Japanese-y: Benihana and the Question of Cultural Appropriation.”
They also offer sushi-making classes. It’s time for them to get in on the action!
Amazing. My wife and her best friend from college have a tradition of getting friends together for their combined birthday Benihana dinner since before I met her (often at this location), but she wasn't aware of this.