Benihana — Restaurant in The Woodlands

If I could give this location zero stars, I would. Our experience last night was absolutely horrible! We were a group of 9, celebrating my son's birthday. Our cook was great but our server and the management was horrible. To start, we told several staff members, including our server, Alivia, that we were there to celebrate my son's birthday. They did give him a "Happy Birthday" card as well as a bottle of sake, on the house. However, he ordered a long island ice tea to have with his dinner and the server never brought it out. Three people at our table ordered steamed rice instead of fried rice and none of us ever received our rice. They never sang "Happy Birthday". To top it off, we sat at our table waiting for a cook for close to an hour before I flagged a manager (Brian) down to ask how much longer it would be. They had no cooks available and I was told it would be another 10-15 before one was available. This was at around 7:45 (our reservation was at 6:15). It was hot in there, that seating was tight, and it was extremely loud; all to be expected however to be forced to sit there for hours was treacherous. At the end of this nightmare of an experience, the server had the nerve to ask how everything was. I told the experience was horrible and I went on to explain why, the only thing she said in response was "okay" basically brushing me off and not taking accountability for the poor service and experience. No apology, nothing. So before we left, I made sure to tell the manager about our experience and to add insult to injury, he handed me two $10 gift cards. He didn't even apologize, either. Nothing. Horrible, horrible, horrible service. We will never go back to this location again and I will advise anybody who will listen to not go there either. We ended up finally leaving out of there at around 9:30, mind you our reservation was at 6:45. We also had paid reservations at 9 o clock that for Top Golf that they were gracious enough to push back 30 minutes but half of our party was already there waiting on us to arrive so we told them to go ahead and check-in so that weren't just standing around waiting. So, my son lost about an hour of play time from his reservation by the time we were finally able to get there. It costed me an extra $92 too extend his play time until midnight, which was their closing time. Once the cook had finally arrived to our table (table 9), I missed a good portion of the "show" having to call top golf and see if they would even be willing to push back out reservation. I rarely leave reviews but they're lack of training and hospitality really ruined a...

i’m absolutely not the type to write reviews, but i’ve had a few days to reflect on this experience whether to share it or not. as someone who looks at reviews before i go to a place to see what i’m getting myself into , i felt sharing this was a much needed heads up. i’d like to start by saying it was a sunday night, very slow, & was a party of 13. i believe the tables only seat 10 max so i appreciate them trying to squeeze us all together so there were 2 chairs on the edge by the grill side. i’m a waiter myself so i tried my best to help our waiter make this nice & smoothly as possible, which he did. now here’s where it all went south. we were at the back corner of the restaurant so you couldn’t see who or how many of us were sitting there, i literally kid you not our chef, who was a man with long locs , (i can’t remember what his name was) he looked around the corner saw all of us & literally threw the biggest attitude ever. he rolled his eyes , made a face, sighed , & everything about his body language told us he did not want to be there. he didn’t even try to keep it under wraps. he then literally pushed the cart into the wall right behind where my sister’s boyfriend was sitting & didn’t even bother to look up or greet us till 10 minutes after he got the grill all prepped. now my fault in this was not nipping it in the bud sooner & getting a different chef to cook our food for us, but given it was a slow night & couldn’t see any managers or other cooks around i didn’t bother. 2 of us got all of their food cooked in 15 minutes, everybody else didn’t eat till 45 minutes later. definitely sub par food & so not worth it for the price & attitude we got that came with it. there are way better hibachi places for half the price & without a doubt better service. i understand people have bad days but we did not deserve any of that at all. we still tipped out the undeserving chef out of courtesy but will never come here again. it was beyond...

We got seated about five minutes after our reservation (5:45pm). Several minutes went by before the manager came to take our drink and appetizer orders because the server was “tied up”. Our server popped by a bit after and took the table’s order. Our drinks showed up after the appetizer was served - nobody got an alcoholic beverage. One of the drinks was missing and it took about 12 minutes for that missing sparkling water to appear. We were seated for 32 minutes before the soup got to our table. Several more minutes go by and the server mentions that our chef should be out shortly and thanked us for our patience. At about 45 minutes after we were seated, all we had were our drinks, the appetizer and soup and salad. I got up and asked the manager about what the wait time was. I mentioned the wait time and how we were ready to walk out. It is not acceptable to wait nearly an hour for an entree. Our chef magically appears shortly after this.

The food wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great either. It was our first Benihana experience but not our first hibachi/teppanyaki experience. We thought that such a big named restaurant would have much better service and food.

At the end of the meal, the manager came by and offered complimentary appetizer/dessert voucher. He tried to make it right.

Be prepared to wait. It was not that busy when we were seated and it took 54 minutes before our chef started preparing our food.

I don’t know what the situation was - but there needs to be more said than “tied up” or a little busy. Be transparent with your patrons. If something happens that affects the quality of the food and/or service, your paying customers deserve to know that. Cause you know damn well, you being on the flip side would want...