Benihana

During a birthday month, we eat LOTS of food. Benihana is one of our go-to restaurants because members of the Chef's table get up to $30 toward your meal! This time, my family was visiting town so we had dinner to celebrate both my mom's and my birthday!

We were seated at one of the 'fun' tables that includes the chef show. We've all seen it before but it's still entertaining because it's a little cheesy. With each entree, we are first served warm miso soup. The waiter takes care of this because the chefs don't come out until a little later.

This is followed by salad. Nearing the bottom, you begin to see how much dressing has soaked to the bottom...

After appetizers, our chef arrived and did his thing, served us sauted veggies, some shrimp, and of course prepared the hibachi chicken rice. It's almost $4 extra per bowl but it just tastes better! We usually split one anyway. Surprisingly, with all the extra goodies we get before our entrees, we were beginning to fill our bellies fast!

For the main course, Dennis chose the Hibachi Salmon with Avocado Tartar Sauce cooked semi-rare. As soon as the chef pulled out this large piece of salmon, I thought he would cut it up into three pieces for the other two dishes but it was a serving for ONE! The salmon cooked this way was ok but it was definitely better fully cooked with some browning. This was served with udon noodles and everything is prepared with lots of garlic butter!

I chose the Hibachi Mango Salmon, which also had a sizeable piece but maybe only 2/3 the size of Dennis's. The mango salsa was a bit acidic for me although the mango pieces themselves were firm and a bit tart. I didn't really like the sweet potato that came with the dish but the fish was decent.

To finish, the waiters come out and sing happy birthday to you.. with a scoop of ice cream! We always select green tea because it is the best flavor! Then the staff took a group birthday photo and brought us a printout to take home. Happy birthday to us! Until next year...