I love Benihana.
It isn’t the food that does it for me; not the USDA Choice steak and certainly not the chicken (though I’ll admit I’m a sucker for shrimp of any kind, for Benihana’s bad dipping sauces, for the mushrooms that are invariably over- and undercooked at the same time). It isn’t even the exuberant faux friendliness of the service, even if I get a little thrill of excitement whenever the entire floor staff gathers ‘round to sing happy birthday to a table twice, once in English and another in perfunctory if adequate Japanese.
Even though I’ll happily eat a plate of food cut into scat-sized bits or clap along with the staff and their birthday song, and will even, if the spirit calls to me—and it has, frequently—pipe up in Japanese when the time comes, what I love about Benihana is more intangible than the food served or the ambience or the reasonable-for-Manhattan drink prices and specials.
It isn’t even the outright wackiness—the flying shrimp tails or the onion volcano or the egg juggling or any of the other cooking acrobatics.
No, it’s the bare, brutal honesty of the whole experience. I don’t just mean the upselling is as clear as the bland onion soup served with your meal. It’s that every restaurant does what Benihana does but more sneakily and less efficiently; it’s that Benihana murdered the preciousness of the “chef’s table” and cooked it up along with shrimp long before the “chef’s table” ever existed; it’s that Benihana understands most people don’t go out just to eat, just to drink, just for the show; it’s that Benihana knows most people just want a good time, and it only exists to give it to them quickly—no matter how large your group, no matter how many yelling kids, no matter how many drinks you’ve had or ordered, you’re in and out in less time than it takes to see a movie. That is why I admire the man who came up with the concept that Benihana perfected and thereby spawned a legion of copycat “hibachi” Japanese steakhouses across the world.
Now, I don’t usually sit around and think about Benihana and why it’s good, although I often sit around and think about why other restaurants I go to are bad. Which is another way of saying I’ve never found Benihana offensive in the slightest, even though I can’t really say I enjoy the food. But this past summer, social media conspired against my studied complacency about examining the Benihana experience too closely. A reporter tweeted out a photo posted by Donald Trump Jr. on his Instagram: a snap of some fried rice shaped into “I <3 U” on a griddle, over which Trump had typed, incomprehensibly, “My culture is not your fried rice ‘I love you’ with a beating heart sign!!! [crying laughing emoji] #culturalappropriation.”
Oh, no! Politics! In food! In restaurants! And even worse I realized it was possible that all along, over the years—even as I laughed and clapped along as countless Benihana cooks scootched a stack of onions spouting steam across what might as well have been the same flattop, a flattop so long it could very well span my 35 years, and said, or yelled, or merely observed as they are obviously required to: “A choo-choo train”—I had been the unwitting accomplice in some form of awful appropriation of my culture, my culture as a half-Japanese person, yes, but more importantly, my culture as a Japanese-American. (...)
The transformation of the popular conception of Japanese culture in this country from the World War II era to the present is entirely unique. Japan was once an enemy so menacing that it warranted putting its emigrants in concentration camps; now it exists as a kind of benign oddity in the American mind. Today, the Japanese are widely known for their food, their cleanliness, their attention to detail, their customer service, and their comics and cartoons, which serve to reinforce the image of Japan as a pleasant, albeit weird, place populated with correspondingly weird and pleasant people—a caricature that is about two parts Marie Kondo, one part Jiro Ono, and one part Haruki Murakami.
This caricature is relentlessly reinforced by the country's admirers in the Western press. We are told the Japanese are just so positive or that we Americans would do well to emulate them, despite regular news reports about the society's deeply ingrained misogyny, exploitative work culture, and the rampant xenophobia that finds its expression in its suicidally exclusionary immigration policies, which is why it’s held up as an exemplar by ethno-nationalists the world over. And let’s not forget the jingoism evident in the pilgrimages and tributes sent by Japanese heads of state to a shrine dedicated to the few token war criminals prosecuted in the aftermath of World War II, which justifiably enrages Japan's neighbors.
All of which is to say, Japan is a complicated country with a troubled culture, but for most Americans, it is merely the source of products that they are willing to pay a premium to possess, not because they are technologically more advanced or qualitatively better, but because they have a certain aesthetic, whether it’s animated cartoons, middle-brow fiction, or scented oil dispensers guaranteed to spark joy for years to come.
Nowhere is this tendency to overvalue Japanese-ness more evident than in restaurant culture, which is why it would be silly for Benihana to ditch any references to its legitimately Japanese origin, even if it doesn’t need them. Japanese stuff sells, and it would be malpractice for any restaurateur not to take advantage of the fact that many Americans are more willing to spend money on “small plates” at an “izakaya” than on bar food at a restaurant and bar.
It isn’t the food that does it for me; not the USDA Choice steak and certainly not the chicken (though I’ll admit I’m a sucker for shrimp of any kind, for Benihana’s bad dipping sauces, for the mushrooms that are invariably over- and undercooked at the same time). It isn’t even the exuberant faux friendliness of the service, even if I get a little thrill of excitement whenever the entire floor staff gathers ‘round to sing happy birthday to a table twice, once in English and another in perfunctory if adequate Japanese.
Even though I’ll happily eat a plate of food cut into scat-sized bits or clap along with the staff and their birthday song, and will even, if the spirit calls to me—and it has, frequently—pipe up in Japanese when the time comes, what I love about Benihana is more intangible than the food served or the ambience or the reasonable-for-Manhattan drink prices and specials.
It isn’t even the outright wackiness—the flying shrimp tails or the onion volcano or the egg juggling or any of the other cooking acrobatics.No, it’s the bare, brutal honesty of the whole experience. I don’t just mean the upselling is as clear as the bland onion soup served with your meal. It’s that every restaurant does what Benihana does but more sneakily and less efficiently; it’s that Benihana murdered the preciousness of the “chef’s table” and cooked it up along with shrimp long before the “chef’s table” ever existed; it’s that Benihana understands most people don’t go out just to eat, just to drink, just for the show; it’s that Benihana knows most people just want a good time, and it only exists to give it to them quickly—no matter how large your group, no matter how many yelling kids, no matter how many drinks you’ve had or ordered, you’re in and out in less time than it takes to see a movie. That is why I admire the man who came up with the concept that Benihana perfected and thereby spawned a legion of copycat “hibachi” Japanese steakhouses across the world.
Now, I don’t usually sit around and think about Benihana and why it’s good, although I often sit around and think about why other restaurants I go to are bad. Which is another way of saying I’ve never found Benihana offensive in the slightest, even though I can’t really say I enjoy the food. But this past summer, social media conspired against my studied complacency about examining the Benihana experience too closely. A reporter tweeted out a photo posted by Donald Trump Jr. on his Instagram: a snap of some fried rice shaped into “I <3 U” on a griddle, over which Trump had typed, incomprehensibly, “My culture is not your fried rice ‘I love you’ with a beating heart sign!!! [crying laughing emoji] #culturalappropriation.”
Oh, no! Politics! In food! In restaurants! And even worse I realized it was possible that all along, over the years—even as I laughed and clapped along as countless Benihana cooks scootched a stack of onions spouting steam across what might as well have been the same flattop, a flattop so long it could very well span my 35 years, and said, or yelled, or merely observed as they are obviously required to: “A choo-choo train”—I had been the unwitting accomplice in some form of awful appropriation of my culture, my culture as a half-Japanese person, yes, but more importantly, my culture as a Japanese-American. (...)
The transformation of the popular conception of Japanese culture in this country from the World War II era to the present is entirely unique. Japan was once an enemy so menacing that it warranted putting its emigrants in concentration camps; now it exists as a kind of benign oddity in the American mind. Today, the Japanese are widely known for their food, their cleanliness, their attention to detail, their customer service, and their comics and cartoons, which serve to reinforce the image of Japan as a pleasant, albeit weird, place populated with correspondingly weird and pleasant people—a caricature that is about two parts Marie Kondo, one part Jiro Ono, and one part Haruki Murakami.
This caricature is relentlessly reinforced by the country's admirers in the Western press. We are told the Japanese are just so positive or that we Americans would do well to emulate them, despite regular news reports about the society's deeply ingrained misogyny, exploitative work culture, and the rampant xenophobia that finds its expression in its suicidally exclusionary immigration policies, which is why it’s held up as an exemplar by ethno-nationalists the world over. And let’s not forget the jingoism evident in the pilgrimages and tributes sent by Japanese heads of state to a shrine dedicated to the few token war criminals prosecuted in the aftermath of World War II, which justifiably enrages Japan's neighbors.
All of which is to say, Japan is a complicated country with a troubled culture, but for most Americans, it is merely the source of products that they are willing to pay a premium to possess, not because they are technologically more advanced or qualitatively better, but because they have a certain aesthetic, whether it’s animated cartoons, middle-brow fiction, or scented oil dispensers guaranteed to spark joy for years to come.
Nowhere is this tendency to overvalue Japanese-ness more evident than in restaurant culture, which is why it would be silly for Benihana to ditch any references to its legitimately Japanese origin, even if it doesn’t need them. Japanese stuff sells, and it would be malpractice for any restaurateur not to take advantage of the fact that many Americans are more willing to spend money on “small plates” at an “izakaya” than on bar food at a restaurant and bar.
by Sho Spaeth, Serious Eats | Read more:
Image: Vicky Wasik
