Benihana — Restaurant in Newport Beach

I really like the food and teppan dining experience here and like to have dinner here about once a month or so. However, Valentines Day was a disaster. I made reservations a few days in advance on OpenTable, for the “bar area”. Not ideal, but given that it was a few days before Vday, I wasn’t going to be too picky. We arrived 5-10min before our reservation and were told, “pick any table in the bar area, as soon as something opens up.” Well, there were scores of people waiting for this first-come, first-served type setup, which prompted me to ask “why did I make a reservation if it’s just a free for all to get whatever table opens?”. The host didn’t know the answer and a second host chimed in, “here’s the number for corporate if you want to call them.” I thought to myself, ok, that’s fine to give me corporate’s number, but that is 100% not the way to handle an issue at the restaurant in real-time.” So, I asked to speak to the manager and was directed to another lady at the front host stand area. She was very nice and understood my frustration and went and cleaned a table off herself to make sure we had a place to sit and order. She also looked overworked to me, so I really appreciated her being so pleasant and trying to make things right. This bar area dining room seemed very understaffed with barely 2 servers. Both servers were working their tails off and seemed very nice and professional, so there was no issue at all with them and our served started out by telling us she apologizes but food is estimated to take between 30-45 min since they’re so backed up. Not ideal at all but we understood and said that’s fine. Drinks and appetizers (the soup and salad) took some time but it was not a big deal. However, when my watch showed 10:20pm and we had no main courses, I finally had enough since our reservation was for 9:00pm. I asked the server about the food and said we might just leave. She assured us it would only be 10-15 more minutes and offered it to go. I wasn’t pleased and she did have a manager comp one meal, which I appreciated, but the night was still kind of ruined. I understand holidays, especially Valentines Day, can be extremely busy. However, for a restaurant serving $50+ meals, you need to plan accordingly for large crowds and make sure the dining experience is still up to par. As a business person, my take is that there is seriously leadership issues here with planning and training staff. IMO, here’s what needs to change: • Plan for large events and bring in temp staff, ask them to work overtime (and comp accordingly) etc to make sure you can handle a very large surge. It’s tough but can def be done. • Coordinate with OpenTable and other reservation partners to make sure you never have someone that books a reservation and is told to hover around the dining area and compete with people walking in (without a reservation) for tables opening up. Totally unacceptable and unprofessional. • Train hosts at front to not be dismissive when someone has a reservation that the restaurant isn’t planning to honor. It’s not okay to shrug shoulders and tell them, “sorry, you booked it for the bar area which is first come, first served.” That makes no sense. How on earth does that make any sense. Then another host telling me I can call corporate is not the solution. I don’t blame the hosts, that’s usually more of an entry level job. I blame the leadership for not training them appropriately. Here’s the real kicker/head-scratcher as well: they called me the day before to verify my reservation! Again, this is so absurd in hindsight that it’s hard to fathom it occurring at a fairly pricey restaurant. You guys have tasty food and can provide a great dining experience but a great experience is not even close to what we got last...

There is some truth to being inside a packed restaurant - the public loves the place! Whether it be the food, the menu, staff members, the chef's working the teppanyaki grill, the birthday celebration songs, or the Benihana ambiance, there is definitely something for everyone. Even kids enjoy!

My friends and I helped celebrated our good friend's forty something birthday (with 20 plus people) . We were all familiar with the check in, the wait for our grills. In our case, we had two grills reserved. Keeping in mind, that each grill will be sharing a unique dining experience and that eating time will typically be an hour later, give or take. Unless you're a regular, figuring out what you want on the menu is another episode and then placing the order, is another.

We had waited at the bar initially for our party to arrive and settle inside the very small space lobby area. Congestion all over, but the bar area was open space with many tables and chairs to choose from. Service at the bar area i rate a 2 to 3 star. Two bartenders on shift dealing with meal orders one side and then there's us, waiting in line at the bar to order drinks. Not sure if the two even acknowledged our presence. Nonetheless, 10 minutes or so later, we placed our order. The Lychee martini was on point. Not use to paying $17 for this cocktail in San Diego but then again could it be because we're in Laguna??? The martini was so good, had to stop at the third order. Let's just say we were super thirsty after our hour and half drive from San Diego ;) Bartenders need to step it up, check their surroundings and move a little quicker when taking drink orders at the bar area.

We had a nice server, nothing more to highlights. Had to look for her couple times for glassof water and drinks refill.

The chef was friendly but felt the chef across the way (rat stuff animal sitting on his left shoulder) had lots more flair, personality and unique tricks during our teppanyaki dining experience. I felt our chef could have use some training from him. Ok same note, i am mindful that our Chef maybe new. Note that all chefs at Benihana are not alike. I Just enjoyed the dining experience with the group.

Our food was tasty. Loved the sauce (forgot the name) that was offered to each guests. I will say that we were all satisfied, at both tables.

Three hours later, we had to leave and head home to San...

Don't go if you want an authentic hibachi experience. It's more like stand up comedy, okay food, semi okay service (a lot of attitude) & the place needs an overall upgrade; change its carpet & maybe upgrade the bathroom.

Staff: I have empathy for lack of employees but this wasn't that! The lack of attention & service to our table was noticeable. We asked for water along with our drinks when we first ordered, we got it at the end of our meal. Zero offers for refills (like not even once). Ice cream came with some of our food, when taking the order she completely skipped the people that didn't get ice cream & didn't offer... my aunt had to tell them "I'll pay for my ice cream you can still offer it." Everyone got a handful of staff singing happy birthday for their table, the lights would go off they light a candle & take a picture. Ours they brought ice cream with candle that went off before my mom could blow it & no pictures were taken & 2 staff that showed up looked like the last thing they wanted to do was be there (one of them being assigned to our table).

Chef: if you are looking for authentic chef with skills this is not a place. The only entertainment was stand up comedy. The sauce were not handed out so when my mom got her chicken (she got her food before anyone else) we had to ask for sauce bc the chicken had zero flavor. The chef with attitude gave us our sauce as the rest of our food got over cooked. The sauce are supposed to be given before they start cooking. And when we mentioned that we were given A LOT of attitude. Zero tricks while cooking when he was done servicing (VERY messy) us he made a volcano. He looked tired, he mentioned he was tired and the experience was extremely awkward.

Manager: at the end of the meal I asked to talk to the manager I made it clear I am not looking for a refund I just wanted to be heard but instead Most of the time he was telling me about his...