An entertaining night at Benihana

Miranda Irwin, Staff Writer • January 19, 2015

At Benihana, guests patiently watch as their chef cooks their food on the grill right in front of them.

The Japanese restaurant Benihana is known for its unique idea of entertaining guests by cooking their food in front of them.

Benihana is located off of Bayshore Hwy in Burlingame, Calif.

Benihana serves their guests complimentary soup and salad before the chefs come out to cook the main dishes.

Benihana is not a restaurant one would want to go to in sweats and a t-shirt. It is a place where people can either dress up for a special occasion or just have a casual date night.

This popular Japanese restaurant seats up to eight people per table. The tables are set up to look like a half circle with everyone facing the grill in front of them.

All of the chef’s wear the same red and white uniform that has hints of the Japanese culture on them. Their job is not only to cook the food, but to entertain the guests and put on a show using the food.

There are a few fairly well known tricks that the chefs use when cooking. One is stacking the rings of an onion on top of each other to make a volcano. The chef then proceeds to pour some sort of oil in the middle of the rings and right on queue smoke starts steaming out like a volcano.

The chefs at Benihana often stack onion rings into a volcano like figure and make it steam through the center like a volcano would. — The chefs at Benihana stack onion rings and make it steam through the center like a volcano.

Make sure to order shrimp when you go to Benihana so you can watch the chef toss the tails into his or her hat! Sometimes the chef will even cut off the shrimp tails and give them to you so you can throw them into their shirt pocket or top of their red chef hat.

Another neat little trick that my server did was cracking all the eggs he was going to use for the fried rice and shaping it into a chicken. The chefs all seem to enjoy entertaining their guests, and they usually do a very nice job.

The chicken and zucchini dish was filled with flavor and seasoning.

The chef cracked a few eggs and then shaped them into a chicken! — The chef cracked a few eggs and then made them into the shape of a chicken!

Benihana uses a lot of garlic butter when they cook, which gives much of the food a nice savory taste, especially the fried rice that conveniently comes with most meals.

While the food does take a while to prepare, the entertainment makes the time seem to go by faster.

Thanks to the attention-capturing cooking skills and delicious variety of food, Benihana, in my opinion, receives a well-deserved 5/5 shrimp tails.