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14 January , 2002
BENIHANA
MEMORIES
Here's my most vivid memory of dining at a Benihana Restaurant: It was in Washington DC, and we were there with some family friends who didn't speak any Japanese. The chef had taught the group phrases such as "thank you" and "you're welcome." To illustrate the phrase for "you're welcome," "Dou itashimashite," the chef, who had a mustache, leaned over towards the young girls in the group and taught them to say, "Don't touchy my mustache."
| Benihana was bustling with guests - all hakujin, or Caucasian guests - being served by non-Asian chefs. |
The food was always good - nice cuts of steak and shrimp grilled with butter and soy sauce, as well as an assortment of vegetables also stir-fried on the massive griddle in front of us. They were served with marvelous dipping sauces, one mustard-based and one soy-ginger. We got all the rice we could eat, and a salad topped with a dressing that to this day is one of my favorites.
But it wasn't the food that made Benihana so special.
It was the showmanship of the chefs, and the uniqueness of the concept. The chefs were trained in Japan in what we all figured was the ancient art of "teppan-yaki," ("steel-grill broiled") or loosely translated, table-top barbecue. They flashed their knives in dazzling displays of dexterity - kids, don't do this at home -- and turned cooking into a performance, slashing the meat and vegetables with a dramatic flair and even adding comedy to the routine by aiming bits of food from their spatula straight into a diner's dish, or into his mouth. The Benihana chain, which stretches internationally, appropriately calls the concept "eatertainment."
Over the years, our family stopped going to Benihana for special meals. We visited Benihana and an early Denver-area rival, Gasho of Japan, after we moved to Colorado. But our get-togethers were booked more and more often at more authentic Japanese restaurants and sushi bars, where we could get something more traditional than teppan-yaki.
The last time I ate at a Benihana, it was at the insistence of a co-worker who loves it there, and thinks it's the best Japanese food he's ever had. It was an odd feeling, because although the food was still tasty, the experience was a cultural mixed bag: The entire staff, from the manager/host at the door to all the chefs, was Hispanic. It made me wonder about the nature of authenticity in ethnic food. The clientele, except for me, was entirely non-Asian.
The same was strikingly true during a recent short trip to San Francisco, when we peered inside the Benihana located in the heart of JapanTown's main building. While the handful of Japanese restaurants across and down the hall were serving dinners to scattered diners, Benihana was bustling with guests - all hakujin, or Caucasian guests - being served by non-Asian chefs. This brought out a knee-jerk reaction in me of cultural pride and a reverse racism, but I calmed down. Any business that brings non-Japanese to the heart of the Japanese community is good, and whatever bit of true Japanese culture the visitors glean from their brief exposure is a good thing. Erin and I simply lodged our personal protest by entering the restaurant directly across the hall from Benihana, Osaka-ya, and ordered our dinners from our Malaysian waitress. Sigh. Such is the nature of cultural authenticity in this day and age.
Then again, no one has ever accused Benihana and other teppan-yaki restaurants of being particularly authentically Japanese. There are certainly teppan-yaki restaurants, including Benihana, in Japan these days, but I don't know if the showbizy concept existed before Benihana. Even the idea of cooking meat for food is relatively new in Japan. The Japanese ate a mostly vegetarian and seafood diet for centuries until Americans arrived in Tokyo Bay in the mid-1800s. I've always assumed teppan-yaki was a Japanese American invention, an adaptation of a traditional idea.
But Benihana was started by a Japanese man, not a Japanese American. Hiroaki Aoki was raised in a coffeeshop and restaurant opened by his parents soon after the end of World War II in Tokyo, which was called Benihana, or "Red Flower." His father had been an entertainer before the war, and the young Hiroaki must have inherited his dad's flair for showmanship.
The renamed "Rocky" Aoki - easier for Americans to pronounce - came to the US in 1960, selling ice cream by day and studying restaurant management by night. He opened his first, four-table teppan-yaki style Benihana Restaurant in 1964, near Times Square in New York City, featuring chefs who entertained the diners as they cooked.
The restaurant took off after a rave review in a New York newspaper, and the Benihana chain was off and running. Rocky eventually sold his interest in the chain, and by the 1980s was more famous for speed boat racing than as a restaurateur.
The chain now has many rivals - in the Denver area over the years, Japanese steakhouses have come and gone using the same teppan-yaki concept.
A new one based on the tried-and-true Benihana formula, Hibachi, recently opened in a northwest Denver suburb. And for the first time in years, I had a special family dinner at a teppan-yaki restaurant. Erin's family and her Uncle Steve's family got together to celebrate New Year's Day - it beat cooking for three days and cleaning up all night afterwards for a home cooked feast.
The restaurant is spacious and high-tech, with a very nice and accommodating staff. I heard Japanese being spoken at the front desk, although our server was Chinese and our chefs (our party took up two tables) Hispanic. One of the chefs, who was a veteran of various Benihanas, spoke some Japanese - a nice touch, I thought. The food was very good - the sushi in particular added a more traditional flavor to the grilled meat and fish -- and Rocky Aoki's idea had lost none of its charm.
The chefs dramatically began their cooking by covering the grill top in a wall of flame, and ran through their knife routine. They shot their food at our open mouths before cleaning up and leaving us to eatertain another table. The chef at our table even let me get up and handle his knife and slice up the steak on the grill.
I didn't do a very good job, but it was fun, pretending for a moment that I was the last of the Japanese teppan-yaki chefs. Just remember, don't touchy my mustache!