Benihana — Restaurant in Broomfield

Hard to know where to begin. We were enjoying a special weekend away and thought Benihana would be fun and I like a good Japanese steakhouse. We were so disappointed. To start our table was in a terrible location right at the entrance to the hibachi area and we were on the aisle end. We had constant cool air blowing on us which I believe was to help offset the heat of the tables, but it was not a good place to sit and enjoy a meal.

Apparently they don't have a good system for handling food allergies and sensitivities. There were three people at our table with such issues, when they let the server know she seemed overwhelmed. They didn't have good options for say the person who had a challenge with onion for the soup and salad, or another person who had a sensitivity with gluten. The person with onion just didn't get soup and the salad was served with just lemon instead of dressing.

Everything took forever from the soup and salad to the hibachi cook getting to our table. We had been sitting for over an hour when the cook showed up to take care of the table next to us that had been seated 30 minutes after our table, they were just finishing their salad. One of the guests at our table asked to speak to the manager and she explained that it was our fault because we had people with food allergies. No apology, just it's your fault. About five minutes later our cook showed up.

I say cook because these guys are not chefs, at least not of the quality I have experienced at a goo Japanese steakhouse. He was flustered trying to figure out what he was doing. He seemed annoyed that we were a quiet table and that the table next to us, who were drinking heavily and very gregarious, were engaging their cook more then our table. There wasn't a good plan to handle the allergies and basically the folks who had them were cooked for first. No one on the staff asked for clarification, though two people had made it clear that it was a sensitivity and not a true allergy. My partner has the onion sensitivity couldn't have the fried rice and asked for steamed instead. His food was done first, hibachi salmon with avocado tarter sauce. Because of the breeze hitting us he had to eat while the food was hot, he did not get the avocado sauce, and his steamed rice came after he finished his food. The noodles on the dish was maybe a half a cup and the salmon about four ounces. The salmon was cooked well, but the amount of pepper was overwhelming the flavor. Not much other seasoning. At this point we were just laughing at the challenges because it was so bad. The server was hard to find and the place was so noisy it was hard to talk or hear.

It would be another 20 minutes or more before I got some of my food, and even longer for folks at the other side of the table. I got my fried rice first and normally I would wait for the rest of my food, but the cold breeze meant my rice would be cold before I got my seafood. No one at the table received their shrimp appetizer. It was another 15 or so minutes before my shrimp, scallops, and calamari would make it to my plate. The shrimp was over cooked by about 10 minutes, they sat on the grill for at least 15 minutes and were hard and rubbery. The scallops and calamari were cooked perfect but again too much pepper and not much else. The cook put about a 1/4 teaspoon of garlic butter on my seafood, a bit of lemon, and too much pepper. And I also did not get any dipping sauce. The cook at the next table had taken our sauce bowls and the server forgot our sauces.

I was the first of the non-allergy folks to get my food and the cook was working on the others. After everyone got their main courses, he then started cooking the vegetables, onions, and a piece of zucchini. Again very little flavor and most of us had finished our main course. Our cook was just not good and not able to handle the allergies, which I blame on management. The entire table was just ready to be done. This was two and a half hours of one fiasco after another. Don't waste your money, definitely don't go if you...

Salt is not supposed to be used so much and I swear that’s the only thing I could taste was salt. Started out the waitress/host. I don’t know what she was saying she was very soft spoken and I couldn’t hear anything she said and she didn’t bother speaking The drinks took forever to come out when the soup is brought out my daughter made it clear. She could not have mushrooms, and so they took her soup away, and another soup was supposed to be brought out without mushrooms, which never happened. The smoke from the table in front of us was horrible, causing my wife to keep her napkin over her face for most of the night when she wasn’t trying to put the salty food in She felt her scallops were a little undercooked The lobster tail look more like a large crawdad than a lobster had to have been by far. The smallest lobster tail I have ever seen the steak was cooked properly, but way too much salt. I’ve eaten Asian Japanese Chinese. This was more like Salt-enese There was really no other flavor noticeable in the fried rice or the steak or the lobster or the scallops. It was just plain salt my lips still have that feeling of way too much salt and it’s been almost 4 hours since we ate. Of course that upset my stomach, making it a very exciting night. Extremely overpriced for what I got there are dozens and dozens of restaurants where I could’ve went and got a lobster tail twice that size for half that price. It amazes me that they were as busy as they were for the low quality and the small portions. This is not a place that I would recommend to even an enemy and I definitely have no interest In returning. They offered multiple flavors of ice cream but then came back and said all they had was green tea. It was the worst $328 I’ve ever spent then on top of that. They wanted a minimum tip of 18% for crappy service They were lucky they got 15%. If you want some quality food definitely stay away from there But if you enjoy paying extra for something that’s not worth it and getting smoke blown in your face all night then that’s the place to go. To make things even worse, we were set Add a table that apparently was set up for 11 which made it very crowded. We made reservations for four and had to share with a very rude group of people that were obviously there to drink The man next to me was constantly bumping up against me in this crowded seating situation and I’m more than one occasions I had to remind him there was somebody else besides him on planet Earth what made it even more complicated was they didn’t even speak English so the communication didn’t seem to make a difference or at least they acted like they only spoke Spanish. It was by far one of the most disappointing dinners I’ve ever dealt with if you really want good quality food. There are many restaurants much much better that do not depend on salt as a main course. And what happened to the little performance in fun show that the cook used to do all our guy did was tap on the metal a lot and make a lot of noise it is hard to hear and have a conversation. He did a half assed little volcano thing where he stacked the onions unevenly poured some lighter fluid in or whatever it is let it blow a whistle. What the hell was that extremely boring, no excitement whatsoever I remember spending a whole lot of money there a long time ago and tipping extremely well because the show was good. The atmosphere was happy and exciting and the food tasted good now I would’ve been better off going...

Words cannot even begin to describe the absolutely miserable experience our family had at Benihana this evening. We have 2 kids who are big fans of hibachi, and were recently at the Benihana on the Strip in Las Vegas, where we had a great experience, so we thought we would try this location near our home to celebrate a birthday, but this was our first visit and last visit to the Benihana location in Broomfield, Colorado.

First, we had made a 5 pm reservation, via Open Table, and despite arriving timely, we were not seated at the table until almost 5:30 pm. Another family with kids was seated at the communal table with us at the same time and suffered the same issues. The restaurant was busy tonight and woefully understaffed. Our young server seemed to try his best, but he appeared relatively new to his role and struggled with taking our order and getting the appetizers out in a timely manner.

The table directly behind us had actually arrived after us and was almost DONE with their dinner by the time our hibachi chef (“Louie”) finally arrived, after we waited in relatively good spirits since being seated for 1 hour and 15 minutes (I am not exaggerating). He was not in any way apologetic for the delay, made sure that everyone at the table knew that he was having a bad day, and then did not even introduce himself, welcome guests or confirm the orders, as is usually done in our experience. When we made a comment about our excitement for our international visitor to see the show, Louie made a snarky comment to the effect of “If you want a show you are obviously not hungry” (realize that there were 2 sets of kids at the table who had been waiting patiently and they were VERY hungry).

My wife reminded him that she had a food allergy to onions, and he then snidely said that he had never heard of anyone with such an issue (essentially mocking her in front of everyone). The rude comments only got worse from there, and though I have never done so before, I got up and announced that our family would be leaving, which we did.

On the way out, I asked to speak with the manager (“Guillermo”), who seems like a very reasonable guy. I explained to him what had happened and he was very empathetic and apologetic. I offered that we would pay for the food we had ordered (but were not staying to eat), but he was insistent that he would not take our money – the damage had already been done and there was really nothing further he could do. I left him with my business card and told him to contact me if he had any further questions.

I still cannot believe that this happened. The hibachi chef obviously hates his job, but there was absolutely no excuse for him to take it out on a table of guests or to treat us with such disrespect. This restaurant seriously needs to address their staffing issues (or at least notify guests of possible delays at check in to give THEM the option to go elsewhere), and then also decide if they want to continue to employ such a poor representative of their brand in a...