Benihanas

Benihanas 9 – Driving past this place you might not even notice it. Its located on the other side of Hemlock from Pittsburgh Blue and Granite and you can only see the back which has its title spelled out in red letters. The front however is much more grand with huge 30ft pillars and architecture you’d expect of a Japanese restaurant. Reservations are a must as when I called they were all booked up for Friday so I had to make them Monday. You get seated at a table with 8 people total and a stainless steel grill with a exhaust vent over the top. The waitress took our drink orders, Beth got a mojito and I, in honor of her trip to Hawaii got a mai tai. Her mojito was decent as I recall but the mai tai while tasting fine, was nothing to brag about and was lacking any garnish whatsoever. I really expected at minimum a cherry and wedge of pineapple. I can pour rum and juice into a glass myself, for $7 put some fruit in there. One amusing piece was a family of 4 sat with us and one of the 2 boys asked Beth what drink she got. He was about 14 but really wanted to have that drink with the crushed mint leaves in there. His dad told him it was a ‘grown up drink’ and he has to wait a few years. I was going to tell him it was a girls drink but thought better.While the food was above average, the service and ‘eatertainment’ really carried the whole experience here. Beth ordered the teriyaki steak and I, Rocky’s choice, a steak and chicken combo. Our chef came to our table and proceeded to start off the experience with by playing a nice little ditty with his utensils as if they were drums and chimes, all the while showing off mad freestyle skills by flipping and twirling them thru the air. Even I, who dabble in doing neat tricks and like a little risk involved with sharp knives was impressed by some of the moves he pulled off. It got a little crazy at times with some highlights being knife skillz, shrimp tail flips, and blind egg catches. They brought onion soup for the first course. His knife skillz were solid on the second course fastly slicing shrimp. They were all lined up and he got a sick pattern of slicing and dicing doing on that was fun to watch. Some of the shrimp tails flew onto our plates and some he’d flip up into his tall red chef’s hat (more on this later).Next the chef cooked up a bunch of fried rice. He threw it on the grill and mixed it up and played with it a lot. It looked good and sounded cool while it was cooking. There were 3 eggs that went into the rice and he did some cool tricks with these. One was spinning really fast like a Frisbee and he picked it up with the spatula and was flipping it all around while spinning. After a while he flipped it into the air and let it come down and slice itself on his spatula catching it in the bowl beneath. With another egg he was again flipping it all around and tried to seal the deal with a blind catch in the bowl behind his back. He totally missed and the egg splattered all over the floor. He continued to play with the rice and pushed a small portion of it in a line over to Beth and said “this is for you.” Then he pushed a huge amount over to the big girl at the other side and said “this is for you!” For a moment I thought she was offended but I think she got over it. Then there was another pile of rice in the middle. The guy cut out a chunk from the big pile and put it in the middle pile and started carving and pushing the rice around. Then after a while I saw it formed a heart. Neat. Then Beth told me after about a minute that the 3 piles together said “I love U.” I didn’t even catch it until she told me. Part probably due to our being seated on the side, and partly due to the mai tai being better than I thought. From there he cooked up the chicken and the steak for everyone. Highlights here again were his knifery. It sauté’d up real quick. He cut up all our food for us and put it directly from grill to plate. Its really cool to have him slide it off the grill and onto your plate. The taste of the food was great. It compares to most places as far as quality. I thought there could have been more seasoning and flavor in the meat but its really all about the show here. The food is secondary to the interaction with the chef and his showmanship which definitely accounts for 85% of the experience here.Upon concluding his service he thanked us and proceeded to take a bow, tilting his head down dumping out the shrimp tails that had been sitting in there since the 2nd course. The bill was much more realistic here and we seemed to get a better sample of food. I’d love to go with a group of friends because it was a really interactive atmosphere with lots of stimuli. But it was even fun sitting down for dinner with a couple of happy strangers and getting a glimpse of different cultures.