Benihana Reviews

Was seated 30 minutes after reservation time.
Over booked so more chairs added to table so it was over crowded
Orders wrong
Food was good though once they got it right

I love Benihana!!! I've been coming here for over 25 years. It never gets old.

Great place for traditional style Hibachi with a slight modern twist! It is served as a course menu. Btw, I really love the clear mushroom soup that comes with it. Here in manhattan, you can also get delivery from this restaurant if you are located within several blocks from it. However, several things might have been changed by now. Anyway, one in San Diego area also didn't disappoint me at all. Great place!

Roy was an awesome chef. Funny and very fast. Food was really good. Left more than satisfied.

Maybe worst restaurant experience ever. My wife and daughter were with five other mother/daughter pairs on a U.S. world history trip to DC and Pennsylvania, and they decided to drive up to New York for a couple of days afterwards. With limited time they reserved a table here to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls.

They had a 9:45 reservation and weren't seated until about 10:15. The room was sweltering hot to the point where they were all sweating, and the manager politely came in to tell them that he had turned on the a/c. The room never really cooled down.

Drinks were served initially, but after an additional hour, there was still nobody there to cook their food. When one of the moms went to the front desk to inquire, the manager came back and rudely said, "Why am I not surprised to hear a complaint from this table?" They hadn't been rude in any way, and were shocked. They felt like they were being pranked. After having sat there for an hour and then having been disrespected they were literally looking around for hidden cameras.

The party remained there until 11:45 (2 hours total) and were never served a meal. At one point, somebody tried to start their grill, but it wouldn't start.

In the meantime, they watched other parties come in, get seated, get served food, and leave, while they were still there waiting for their grill to be started. At the table next to them a second party was already seated. Why in the world were they not given that table when their grill wasn't working?

There was never an apology, just an offer to remain there for 20% off or a free round of drinks, but they had already had drinks.

Everyone left starving and upset with the birthday girl literally in tears. This was on October 20th, just a few days ago. Manager should be fired for sure. It was extremely angering to make this a premier event on a very brief trip to NY and not even receive food. I mean, restaurants should really probably serve food, right? They charged the ladies for their drinks.

Under normal circumstances they would have of course left sooner, but they were desperately trying to redeem the birthday dinner. Eventually they gave up and ordered pizza up to their hotel room, and bought her a cupcake.

Thanks Benihana!

EDIT: Below, there's a response from Benihana asking me to fill out a form so they can make things right. I filled that out over a week ago... Nothing. Lol

Very interesting experience! The cook was excellent and funny, nice tricks.
Downsides: very crowded, you need reservation and sometimes you need to wait before the waiter notices you again

The food was great and Devin was fantastic on the grill.

Good food. Had a great time. Server delfin was super friendly and made the experience really good for our family.

It's Benihana. It's not perfect but yet it's SO perfect

Didn t even get served. Looked at us like we were crazy for asking, then refused to serve me even still. Absolutely garbage customer service do not go here.

Today i went there on my lunch break . I told The horrible guys Teirino and John that i was on a hour break . That my coworkers and I were in a bit of a hush . Teirino from the bar was very rude and was speaking to us in a very disgusting way. long story short our food never came . We sat there for an hour . No one came n check up on us . We had to get up for them to tell us our food haven t been made or finish cooking . Now we had to go back to work hungry or without food to go .I would never go back there again or recommend anyone to go back there . There service is soo horrible . I am soo Upset and annoyed.

Just went here with a party of 4. We were seated with a family of 3. This was my first time here and it was amazing. The staff was very kind. I made reservations a few days prior to visiting. I booked the occasion for a birthday. It only took us 5 minutes to sit down. Our server was Devin, he was amazing and funny. I had 2 kids in my party and they were well entertained. The meals were cooked to order and the soup and salad was also amazing. We shares the punch bowl drink. At the end of the meal they sang happy birthday and one more time in japanese. I will be coming back but with a bigger group. If you are on the fence about coming here my suggestion is that you go, but make a reservation because they tend to get crowed

Great Teppanyaki place. Very talented chefs. Keep entertaining you while your food is being cooked. Spicy chicken rice and cold sake infused with apple juice.

It would be a great restaurant if you get to eat there, they had us waiting for more than two hours when we had a reservation for 8.15, finally, at 10.30 we decide to leave as it was a bad taste joke. Looks nice, to be honest, a cool place to dinner but the only problem is you won t dinner there.

The wait is terrible. Doesn't matter if you have a reservation or not. The staff really does not care if they are almost an hour late with your table. Hibachi is good but chefs are inconsistent. You can get someone amazing or average/bad. Even so the food is very very good.

This was not one of the best Hibachi places in nyc by far. The bathroom was disgusting and crowded because there s only two stalls.... and they aren t clean. The seating is 9 people plus to a table and the table fit 7 comfortably so your either touching strangers or tight in your chair! The food has a lack of flavor and taste. It also hurt my stomach the next day. The reason is gets two stars and not one or none is because the people, the host was fairly nice about calling me and confirming my reservation, I got seated within 30 minutes, our waiter was patient, and our cook was friendly. The drinks are watered down, if you think the prices are because their strong, your wrong. I just order shots at some point and it was still watered down. The quality of this place has gone down and I wish I got to experience this place when it was at its best. I believe the friendliness and kindness of this restaurant is to compensate for the bad food, bad atmosphere, bad bathrooms, and just overall bad experience. Also (there s a lot of drunk people and not any diversity other than the staff).

This is the original location of a worldwide sensation. I sat and ordered at the bar and this place can get crowded for special events like high school graduation parties. I ordered a pina colada. It tasted like a typical ice cream slushi down to the pineapple syrup at the bottom of the glass. I barely tasted any liquor in it. My most pleasant surprise was the onion broth soup. I hate onions but this soup was so mild i found it delicious. I ordered spicey chicken with fried rice (extra charge). It came with shrimp and too many onions but it was spicey!

Fab place. Whole family had a ball. Food was fab too

Cozy ambience at our semi-private table. Food was delicious and the show was fun.

Hair in the soup. Entertainment chef, Roy, was about as much fun as he sounds. There are much better options in the city. I'll never be back here and I hope this helps guide people elsewhere as well.

My sons favorite restaurant. Its a bit pricey and If you want a good show i recomend asking for the most fun chef. Sometimes my son is disapointed in the chefs showman skills and at that point over paying is not ok anymore.

My friends and I (a bunch of college kids on a conference trip) had some of the best hibachi ever. The chef preparing the food made our experience a 10/10 and brought a hilarious personality to the table of already roudy 18-22 year olds.

Would go again!

Great place to eat and the food is excellent and great service

Good place to take a nice girl,not the place for thotiana...

Reservations a must very busy. Tables are really close so be prepared to be bumped

Excellent place for celebrating an event to remember!

A few years have now passed, but I remember with pleasure the evening and dinner in this excellent restaurant.

I've always enjoyed it here.

Tip, if you call and they tell you that you don't have to make a reservation, while that is technically true, make one anyway. You don't want to have to wait over an hour for a table.

The sushi was awesome!!! Everything was absolutely delicious service was great

Benihana is excellent service and very delicious food. Sushi very fresh seafood. I love Benihana!

If you never experience this you must go its beyond anything you have had and it's not terrible expensive like most places you have fun enjoy the show enjoy the food. Take the family enjoy yourself different verities of food and everything tastes amazing cooked right in front of you seasoned as well in front of you.

Doesn't even deserve the star in the first place. Made a reservation for my moms birthday but when I arrived they said t didn't exists. Then tried to tell me I lied about the phone call. Overall, service is absolutely the worst literally my beard grew as I waited for the table. The host (some dude with a topknot) was worst then the service. He begun with a lie about wait and was rude from the start. The other half of my party had to leave because they couldn't figure out their mistake out!

Repetitive, but do it once in your life if you don't mind people sitting at your table and a person making a stack of onions into a choo choo train ...oh and I should say my 10 son and wife love it.

I had a wonderful time eating at Benihana today! Chef Ramon put on a great show with awesome hibachi knife tricks, hilarious comedy that had us laughing at every moment (the cow named Julianne joke had me rolling!), and good food to top it all off. Thank you so much for the experience!

Benihana was great as usual . Nice clean fun place and the food is always top notch.

Over rated but good if you know what to put on your food

I was not impressed with this location. We sat outside and ordered 6 course hibachi meals. We both got steak medium rare and fried rice. We were served a fully cold 6 courses! The meat was over cooked and also cold. The only things I enjoyed were the onion soup (which came out with our salads unlike every table around us who was served them seperately) and the dipping sauces. Luckily we were incredibly hungry, and probably would've eaten anything put in front of us. I wouldn't return to this location knowing there are so many other hibachi locations throughout the 5 boroughs.

They did a great job accommodating a change in our already large group reservation. The waiter was excellent. There were only two things that weren't great. The first was that the food was very salty and the second was that my husband is vegan and they didn't seem to understand how to prepare his food (no butter, etc).

Love the fact that u see how they cook the food right infront of u.

terrible experience!!! I made a reservation and got there before time. The guy told me that I was going to be seated shortly. 1.5 hours passed and we wore not seated. People were starting to get mad and the waiting place got really crowded. I went to ask again and he got really rude. I girl got hit police had to show up. Terrible Terrible experience.!!

Its a lovely place, it just is a ridiculously long dinner. Be prepared to spend 2 hours minimum.

I'll start by saying that coming here with a group of friends can be a great experience!

Tbh this restaurant is mostly hype though and a lot of flashiness. The food is ok at best, but nothing to die for in my opinion. The chefs are really talented and its cool to see them do tricks but you realize that you're mainly paying for the experience and the show rather than the food. I had a good time but I feel no need to ever come back.

The sushi was mediocre & not fresh, they couldn t even manage a spicy salmon roll. There was no gluten free menu or all rice noodles for hibachi when they said there was while making the reservation.
If you ask for a private hibachi room for a large party you have to sign a contract, which is fine but wasn t stated at the time of making the reservation so even though it was confirmed on the phone that it was a private room, they still added people. They do not give you everything you order, nor do they give you everything that comes with your order...

Regretting choosing this establishment for a double celebration, very surprised at how such a high end franchise could be managed so so poorly.
The only redeeming aspect was our waiters attentiveness for some of our parties gluten sensitivities & the picture they gave us after.

This was my first time at this restaurant &
it was not a well received experience.

I love you see when prepared your food is amazing and excellent food

It's a go to spot with pick up and outdoor seating. Food was good. Sat outside on a great day. City life

We waited for 50 minutes to get our table! We had an 8:15 reservation and we didn't get seated until 9:05. The wait was miserable. Just go somewhere else, the value just isn't there unless you're getting the birthday discount.

Bland and extremely overpriced. Had to douse everything in the ginger sauce. Salad had rotten lettuce.

Such an awesome experience. Great for families or celebrations. Food was delicious. The sushi was so fresh too.

This Benihana's experience is top-notch. Couples cB expect to meet new friends as you share a table with an entertaining chef who cooks at your table with style.

Be sure to reserve your table to shorten your wait.

The food was ok. The cook was good. But the server was horrible. I had to ask multiple times for drink refills. He was not attentive to our table at all. And some how his tip was automatically included in the ticket. It was only a 2 person ticket. He provide horrible service and still get a decent tip. I would never come back to Benihana. Birthday or not.

Like any other Habachi spot. 3 stars, the cooking was regular cooking in front of you. Not much of a show . Save yourself the LONGGGGGGGG wait and crowding. Go somewhere else.

Came in with a reservation for 8:30pm and didn t get seated until 9:30pm AND didn t get served food until 10:30pm. After two hours of waiting, the food was at least good, but the waitress kept forgetting our drink orders and only came to our table once. Easily the worst service our group of friends has ever received at a restaurant of this price point. Would definitely avoid if you re in the NY area. There are better places here to spend your money with less of a wait.

What is there to dislike about Benihana's? I enjoy myself everytime. The key is to make a reservation.

We can enjoy performance and various dishes at low price. It is popular with children. I can not recommend beef and I think seafood is good.

Took 45 min to get drinks and over an hour for food.

The food is amazing, a bit pricy but comes with the theme. That's about the only positive. Every single time I've had to wait at least 30 minutes with a reservation. Last time I left after waiting for 70 minutes on a reservation made a week in advance. The chefs are also hit and miss with some of them being amazing entertainers and others... Well, not giving a hoot.

Today I was feeling a little depressed I wasn t in the best of moods. My friend wanted to cheer me up and took me to Benihana. My server Gideon must have been sent from the God s. He was well mannered and very professional with the nicest smile. The food was delicious and I had a wonderful time. When I left I definitely felt good inside. Thank you Gideon for being a top of the line sever, giving me the best consumer service that I ever had and making a difference at a time when I needed it the most.

We were served by Gillian yesterday night January 5. He is amazing, gave us good recommendation and took the time to be sure that we had a wonderful experience. The chef was amazing and was the food. Because of them both we will recommend the place 100%. Everyone looked happy to work there.

Great performance. Tasty and well prepared steak, but too much onion in the first salad.

If you call to make reservations the idiots don't answer the phone you can hear them pick up but they just hold the phone and then hang up called a few times then the idiots put the machine on..

I came here in March for my 2 year Anniversary with the family and we all had a blast! The food was so delicious to say the least but the chefs courtesy and waiter was outstanding; could not complain. It s a pretty popular place and I know why. I definitely recommend this place, will be coming back ;)

Very disappointed!!! I used to love this restaurant. Food was horrible

Food was okay at best. Not what I expected and overpriced for mediocre service

The food is superb. It's a fun experience for a group.

I love Hibachi. Benihana is definitely a place to go if you're looking for a fun dining experience. One thing i do want to say is that they need to beef up their table side entertainment.