Feeling at Home in a Chain Restaurant

The large, sizzling, tableside grill sparkles as the oil is drizzled on it. Our locally renown chef grabs a spatula and an egg still in its shell and bounces it up and down on the spatula like a soccer player excitedly bounces his soccer ball. He dribbles the egg down the sheer spatula and into the air, landing softly on the chef’s hat. There is applause and awe from those sitting around the table. Three couples are having a nice evening while meeting new couples and friends.

The chef humbly offers a quick ‘thank you’ in Japanese, then continues with the rice, chicken, and vegetables for the chicken fried rice. The seasoned cook meticulously unravels the yellow onion, stacking the rings into a tier. The shiny grill begins to emit an aroma that’s uncommon to a large restaurant. It’s more like the comfortable smell of home-cooked food, an aroma that just warms the heart. With the lights flickering from overhead, he makes the tower sizzle and smoke, pushing a zucchini with the tiered onion and making the pair sound like a train moving and smoking. “Choo-choo choo,” the chef jokes.

The couples seated at the table watch as their meals are cooked before their very eyes, and prepared to their individual taste. The appetizer consists of expertly and tightly wrapped sushi that manages to keep its shape throughout the bites. Before we finished that, the meat and vegetables are poured next to the bowl packed to the brim with fresh rice.

Putting my cooling onion soup aside, I plop the filet mignon inside my mouth and a small smile unconsciously appears on my face. The meat, so simple yet decadent at the same time, melts away easily, leaving a wonderful sweet taste that lasts long after each piece is devoured.

This is no ordinary Japanese steakhouse. This is Benihana. And, this is no ordinary chain restaurant, either. This is Benihana. This is no ordinary sit-down dinner; this is family style with new people and new conversations. This is no ordinary food; this is dinner where the chef takes time to make quality and flavorful food for each individual. This is Benihana.

The Beginning

According to the New York Times (July 2008), a young Japanese immigrant started the Benihana restaurant chain in 1964 with just the savings that he had collected from operating his ice cream truck. Living in New York at 25 years old, Hiroaki Aoki could not imagine that the entertaining restaurant would bring Japanese food to the mainstream and have almost 80 restaurants across the United States and across 17 other countries.

Aoki said in a 1995 interview on Saturday Live TV (a UK TV program), Benihana’s is “a Japanese restaurant with American ideas.”

He said the idea to have everyone sit around a grill and watch the food being cooked originated in Japan more than three hundred years ago. All he does is make the grill bigger and the cooking process faster to suit the American pace.

“We have a training class and a training school in Japan and Hawaii,” Aoki said. “It lasts about six months, if they pick it up quick,” he says with a laugh.

Aoki says the tricks are very similar all across the various locations on purpose. This is to give the customer a feeling that they can become accustomed to the restaurant. So, it can still be exciting and routine and homey all at the same time, he said.

Like a Family Meal

As a frequent visitor of multiple Benihanas, I notice similar tricks that the chefs use to dazzle us.

“We all do the same tricks. It’s easy,” said our chef, Jason, who declined to give his last name.

“What happens if you drop a knife when you throw it or mess something up?” asked Stacie, a middle-aged woman sitting directly across the large, flat, grey grill.

“I can’t mess up. I’m cut then!” Jason said as he laughed. “There’s always people from the Benihana Corporation disguised as regular guests sitting around the table when we don’t know it. I can’t mess up or the hidden executives will see it.”

I grew up in a very traditional family, where many memorable dinners were long sit-down meals and everyone enjoyed the home-cooked food thoroughly. To this day, I cook most everything from scratch, boiling and peeling ripened tomatoes to create fresh sauce.

For a chain restaurant to have a homey-family feel like this is almost shocking.

“A nice and unrushed meal is the center of all the best memories,” my father always said as I was growing up.

The tables at Benihana leave room for a large family or about four couples. Each time we go, it reminds me of the dinners of my childhood.

Tricks of the Trade

Almost exactly ten years ago, my father, or my papa as I’ve always called him, stands at the end of an over-sized table in my grandmother’s house about to say his Easter Sunday toast. Somehow he begins telling the story from when he was a child where his father allowed him an hour to drive his new Lancia and he brought it back with more than three hundred miles on it. The story goes further. My nonno, my grandfather, begins to laugh at the way my father used the time to his advantage, while still managing to meet new people and drive across much of the region. Even after hearing that story at almost every holiday dinner for my whole life, I still laugh.

My papa still laughs when he tells the story, too. He finishes his toast, says his well wishes, then tosses the cutting knives in the air a short height and manages to have them hit the ham on the way down, just in time for him to begin cutting. He could have been a professional chef.

He has always been a bit of a show-off. My relatives always turn to my mother to see her reaction before applauding or laughing. But, to their delight, she seems surprised and giddy over his tricks, jokes and stories every time. It’s nothing new, that’s for sure. But, his continued excitement about it all keeps his stories and tricks feeling new.

The tricks the chef at the Benihana, Jason, also does not have any new tricks but still manages to draw a crowd.

Feeling Right at Home

The cook at the head of the table makes jokes and draws out a familiar feeling that reminds me of nearly every family holiday dinner as a child. And, though, everyone at a Benihana’s table is not family, this one common denominator makes it seem very communal. With every flashy trick, I get a flash of memory back to my childhood. With a taste of savory ham or steak, I am back at Easter Sunday.

Benihana’s is more than a world-renown restaurant; it’s I can can feel at home.