Benihana — Restaurant in North Bay Village

Sunday January 7th, 2024

Reservations was at 3:30pm but we were still seated without eating at 6:00 pm. Yes, we were informed there would be about a half hour delay/extended wait since they were short staffed on chefs.

Our designated chef; an African american male wearing a chefs coat with the name plate “WOO” that’s d name that was on his shirt - he never stated/gave his name nor introduced himself as is normally done) he came to the table at about 6pm and after he he reviewed each persons order I then informed him of a seafood allergy in my party. He asked how we were and the group at the table mentioned our long wait time and he replied that he was just as tired as we were since he was supposed to be off already.

He proceeds to start cooking shrimp and chicken with the same cooking utensils and when I brought it to his attention again; he stated “but I wiped it off”’ I explained that that’s still not safe so he walked off to get; I’m assuming clean utensils. The chicken , rice and vegetables were left on the grill while he was away which was for an extended time resulting in one side of the chicken being significantly over cooked.

He gets back to the table and in preparing the fried rice he dumps almost the entire container of garlic butter on top of the uncooked rice. Another patron at d table mentions ‘save some garlic butter for the meat’ he responds that he does not put garlic butter on meat as it burns his eyes so he will just put salt and pepper. He then places the uncooked vegetables on top of the rice and garlic butter.

He flips d rice a few times and proceeds to start serving the undercooked fried rice and when other patrons at our table complained about the rice being undercooked /white he says it’s cooked but if we wanted some soy sauce he can give that to us to put on the rice.

He serves one of the parties in my group vegetable fried rice when that individual had ordered two servings of chicken fried rice. I brought it to his attention and he disputes the order and casually leaves d vegetable fried rice on the plate. He then added a few bits of chicken to rice and placed that on the plate alongside the vegetable fried rice with no attempt to rectify the error of vegetable friend rice even after it was brought to his attention.

Again patrons at our table complained that the rice was undercooked and not to their liking and he responds that he cooks the way he was taught. It was at that point I spoke up and suggested that maybe he should consider that it’s not only about how he was taught to cook but the fact that his patrons are expressing how they want their meals prepared and the fact that he was insisting on doing things his way not acceptable to anyone at the table whose complaints were falling on deaf ears.

He then says that he knows the way he cooks the food will taste good. So I tasted the rice and honestly it was bland and greasy as expected since he only added way too much garlic butter and nothing else ie no salt or pepper . I told him that the rice had no taste to which he responded; ‘I can give you some soy sauce’ (note I always ask for extra garlic butter on everything because that gives the food added flavor but the amount of garlic butter that was put on the rice was way too much)

I had enough at that point and realized that we would not get the food prepared to our desired liking so after consulting with my group we decided to leave the table.

On our way out we spoke with two managers and expressed our discontent & our experience . We declined being placed at another table and after being offered a $3 discount as compensation; we paid our bill and left.

Our experience at this Bennihana was horrible. It was our first and will be our last time visiting that location and probably any other location after...

HORRIBLE experience. I grew up going to this location before it was tore down. I also worked for Benihana corp so it has always been my favorite to go with my family. The service has always been great. Well, it’s all gone downhill. Went for my daughter’s birthday, they ruined the day for all of us. We tried to put a smile on just for the kids. First off, we had a reservation for 12 ppl at 7:30pm with a credit card on hold! We get there and they tell us we can try to fit 12 people in a 10 person table or wait for the table across to finish. We had a RESERVATION not walk in. So we tried to squeeze and there was no way more than 9 fit. The manager kept telling me, “I told him it would only fit 10 but he said ok”, referring to my non Spanish speaking American husband blaming him. Extremely disrespectful considering we shouldn’t have to be in this situation in the first place since we had a reservation for 12 and we confirmed via phone that they would sit us together. They kept telling us we can take the table on the other side that was finishing up. Why would you ask a family to split up we made a reservation to eat together? Well, let’s just say we didn’t start eating till after 10pm after complaining several times about the wait. One of the times my husband asked if they were purposely doing this to get us to leave because at this point this had to be done on purpose. The security went up to him as if my husband was trying to cause a scene. (I can imagine this is happening daily that there’s even a security guard). Mind you, never in my life have we been treated this disgustingly and if it weren’t 10pm and my daughters birthday I would have left by 8pm. The manager decided to go up to the waiter and tell her we were complaining, putting stress on her and making our service even worse. We saw the whole scene. As a manager, why not try to correct the issue? they were causing this, not the waiter. This is a toxic environment where they abuse their employees to the point that the service becomes this horrific. To summarize, we left at almost 12am, on a Sunday, with 2 young kids, a screwed up bill I ended up paying $100 more because the waiter says she couldn’t separate any bills and mixed up both tables. Lowering one table to get them to double tip while blaming the managers for leaving her all on her own and put items in our bill that weren’t ours. Why did we pay? We didn’t have a choice the managers had bailed a long time before and the waiter supposedly couldn’t correct our bills she kept saying to believe her everything is correct to just have the other table give me $50 that was on my bill. Excuse me, WHATTTT?! A scam. Corporate needs to look into this. I realized after this is probably what she does for additional tips. We didn’t ask for much other than to be seated like we reserved at a decent time and to pay for what we ordered. Oh, and no desserts offered we brought a cake and she skipped the ice cream part, we even had to ask for soup and salad after an hour of sitting. And the food is good, so it is sad for the cooks doing their job. Those two managers getting a salary while those employees fend for themselves and play with peoples time and money. So disgusting! Last ones there and I still can’t comprehend how they allowed this to happen we showed up to a reservation happily with balloons and cake for my...

I'm reading the reviews and I'm struggling to understand how this restaurant has 4 stars with so many positive reviews. It must have been a really bad day today for our visit. We came to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday and were excited to show her Japanese Hibachi cuisine. She was visiting from abroad and had never experienced a chef cooking in front of her. We had an early booking at noon, so we thought we would escape the crowds. We did, and during the two hours we were at the restaurant there were only 3 tables booked in the main restaurant. Our server was Steven and from the outset it came across from him that he was having a challenging day, and was rushed off his feet with the sheer volume of tables that he was serving. Again, aside from us, there were only two other tables. Every time he came to our table he was in a rush and had a lack of patience. He wasn't rude and even tried to be polite, but it certainly didn't come across as genuine. I didn't see him crack a smile once. We each ordered the 6 course meal and our chef was called Luis. As I mentioned before, we were excited about the prospect of the chef showing off some cooking trickery with a bit of humor, but there was nothing (apart from the stack of onions lit on fire). He didn't smile once. I know the routine must get monotonous cooking the same meal each day over and over again, but we paid a lot to come here for the "experience", but we received nothing. I could have watched by wife frying food for breakfast and would have had the same experience. It defeated the point of a Hibachi grill if we weren't going to have a bit of fun. It was soulless. As part of the 6-course meal, we started off with a soup, then a salad. These were both pleasant. Then comes the main course, which most of us had steak and chicken or steak and shrimp. The other courses that came with the meal was fried mushrooms, and shrimp hibachi. For all of these courses, you could have fit them together on a small plate. We thought we were missing something once everything had been cooked and were half way through the meal, and then realized they had forgotten the rice. Chef Luis hadn't even noticed, and when our server Steven was told, he seemed shocked and quickly returned with our rice. The last course was ice cream, which was pleasant, but they were launched at us by our server Steven who seemed incredibly rushed. As he was launching the bowls onto the table, he told us that he couldn't remember who had ordered which of the two flavors, so we had to put them in front of the right person. My wife had let Steven know earlier during the meal that it was a special occasion of which he acknowledged, but nothing was ever mentioned or anything special brought out for us. We also remembered on the drive home that we were supposed to have green tea as part of the meal but that was also never brought out to us. Again, I really want to think that this was just a bad day/service, but there were just so many things that were not good. It was a terribly poor experience. I work in hospitality and manage large teams, and the number one thing I look for in my personnel is are they caring, genuine, and nice. Everything else can be trained. I know in Miami, these traits are often difficult to find, but, at a restaurant with a reputation that it has, I'm very surprised that it...