Benihana — Restaurant in Lake Buena Vista

The one star is because they at least knew the words to sing happy birthday in English and Japanese.

I have been to Benihana over 50 times in my life worst experience ever. Waiting almost 1.5 hours for a lack luster chef. He gave us no eye contact and minimal talking.

First for starters it was mt wife’s Birthday and it was her first experience ever going to a Benihana. I have been going my whole life. For gods sake I have had mine and my family’s picture on the wall in the Sugar Land Texas location my whole life. So we where visiting Orlando for a couple days and decided to stop by. 8:45 reservation no chef at table till 9:58. I felt so bad for the kids at the table they looked so hungry. I went and tried to track down a chef myself or anyone only bartenders where visible at that point. A table that came in 30 mins after us there chef had almost finished making them their food already. The chef came out looked upset and made our food fast and in a hurt my A-5,Wagu was over salted and overcooked. Water cup was empty for sometime. Went to look for our server he was doing dishes in the back of the kitchen. I saw him through the window. Came time for Dessert and the waiter was like yall want some dessert? Lmao. Duh it comes with our order and it’s my wife’s birthday. Her first time ever to the place. We finished our desert went to track down the manager he never came to our table to apologize once. I found him explained this was the worst experience I have ever had at Benihana in my life. He started trying to make excuses and reasons why everything happened tonight said he would give us some compensation and then our server came back to the table and was like okay I got good news we are taking 20 percent off the bill. I look at the bill and it’s a lil over 10 percent because the manager tried to be slick and only took 20 %off our entrees. Tisk Tisk

First for starters it was mt wife’s Birthday and it was her first experience ever going to a Benihana. I have been going my whole life. For gods sake I have had mine and my family’s picture on the wall in the Sugar Land Texas location my whole life. So we where visiting Orlando for a couple days and decided to stop by. 8:45 reservation no chef at table till 9:58. I felt so bad for the kids at the table they looked so hungry. I went and tried to track down a chef myself or anyone only bartenders where visible at that point. A table that came in 30 mins after us there chef had almost finished making them their food already. The chef came out looked upset and made our food fast and in a hurt my A-5,Wagu was over salted and overcooked. Water cup was empty for sometime. Went to look for our server he was doing dishes in the back of the kitchen. I saw him through the window. Came time for Dessert and the waiter was like yall want some dessert? Lmao. Duh it comes with our order and it’s my wife’s birthday. Her first time ever to the place. We finished our desert went to track down the manager he never came to our table to apologize once. I found him explained this was the worst experience I have ever had at Benihana in my life. He started trying to make excuses and reasons why everything happened tonight said he would give us some compensation and then our server came back to the table and was like okay I got good news we are taking 20 percent off the bill. I look at the bill and it’s a lil over 10 percent because the manager tried to be slick and only took 20 %off our entrees. Tisk Tisk…

I’m not the one to leave reviews or waste my time but it looks like from the reviews something is going on around the 8:00-8:30pm...

What a disaster of a takeout experience. First let me say that the sushi for $40 was about a 4 out of 10. (80 percent rice to actual filling and the taste was bland) anyways that made this whole situation 10X worse. We placed a to go order for $40 sushi and 2 salads. Prompt said to be there around 7:05 I believe. I show up there and have my girlfriend run in to get the food since there’s no parking at the front of the location (Mostly just valet). About 10-15 min goes by and I need to run in to use the restroom. I run in and ask what’s going on and my girlfriend tells me they told her it would be 5 more minutes. I use the restroom and now I’m sitting there waiting with her. Another 5-10 minutes a gentleman asks me what the name on the order is says it will be another 5 min and just disappears.. now it’s been at least 40 min and we still don’t have an order. A little man in a suite (he said his name was William, not sure if that was true or not) comes out and I see he has an ear piece so I proceed to ask him how much longer. He asks on the earpiece “kitchen how much longer for xxxxx” and doesn’t say anything else just takes off the ear piece….. I thought that was strange so I asked him “what did the kitchen say? Because we’ve been waiting for well over 40 min at this point”. He seemed to not like the fact that I actually asked him about what the kitchen said because he all of the sudden raised his voice at me telling me that he doesn’t have to serve me and that it’s all online and I need to get out….. I went and sat down with my girlfriend because clearly he has some sort of a small man power trip. Regardless he follows and keeps on taping about having me go outside or he will call security. Over sushi lmao. I tried to tell him he needs to deescalate the situation because all I wanted to know is how much longer for the food that we paid and what’s taking so long.. he kept on raising his voice in the lobby and kept saying that he would not take profanity. Funny part is I never used profanity I spoke at a normal tone telling him that I just want to know where the food is and why it’s taking so long…. Check the cameras I assume you have those at the front of the host desk. Regardless that is not how you treat your customers and I will make sure to bring this up as high as it needs to go. Worst experience and that little man does not belong in the front of the restaurant dealing with customers if his ego gets hurt. Ps the situation was recorded by my girlfriend and when I’m done with vacation I’ll be posting it to...

This was the most comically foul experience I have ever had at a restaurant. The pros: our hibachi chef was great! The cons: unfortunately, almost everything else!

We made a reservation for 7:30 a few days ago, and it took a little bit to get seated, which happens and is ok. Unfortunately, waiting was a common theme for this meal. It was around 8:30 pm when the initial course of soup came out— the soup was pretty good, but an hour of anticipation for soup and salad was a little difficult to cope with, especially with a reservation made in advance. By all means, we had a predictable quantity of people, were there at a predictable time, and had a very predictable first course of action (eating soup, as one does at Benihana). Alas. The meal continued to take more time than expected— our server dropped in occasionally, and when we were waiting for the chef, told us “he’s just behind that door!” before walking away with haste. (The chef did not appear for several more minutes).

Despite the delays in our meal bringing it to a total of 3 hours since our reservation time, we were still limited in our nonalcoholic drink refills— this was disappointing, since the meal took unpredictably long. The parking tickets also had a 3 hour limit for validation reimbursement, meaning as soon as we got the last of our food, we were on a fun little race against time to get out the door before we got charged for parking! We had to ask for our checks as soon as our server returned after the food came out, which meant we were not offered the hot green tea that comes with all of the entrees. The process of paying digitally was painstakingly long for each person, and seemed stressful for the waiter as well, who had to manually re-enter each check amount into the device. We were on a tight schedule with parking, so we asked the server for help validating— she let us know the hostess stand could help. Believe it or not, no one was there for several minutes either! Thankfully we got out with our parking validated in the nick of time. The process of paying being long and tedious while we were racing against time was the icing on the cake of our Benihana experience. We may not have gotten our green tea, and we may have spent an hour soupless and sipping on our apparently very finite iced teas (perhaps we would’ve paced ourselves if we knew how long the meal would’ve taken). But at least there was some comedic value to the meal. That said I would definitely not recommend eating here, even if you have a good...