Benihana Key West - Benihana's has finally reopened in Key West, to the delight of locals and visitors alike. It's in the same
pre-Wilma location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The food is great, the food prep show is fun, and the decor
is pleasant. For Key West, it may seem strange that a restaurant specializing in beef dinners can thrive, but
people love this place. And they do serve some seafood, like lobster. Opening week, it was packed to the gills
every night, with locals who'd missed their teriyaki for three years while the space lay dormant, as well as
happily surprised tourists hungry for an excellent meal.
Located on South Roosevelt Boulevard, Benihana's has a small parking lot, and when it gets busy in there, you
won't find a parking spot. There's parking on the street, so never fear. If you park on South Roosevelt, it
will be right on the beach, so be careful crossing the road to get to the restaurant. This stretch of road
along the south side of Key West is one of the few places on the island where cars can open up and go fast. If
you're coming into Key West from points north (east), take a left at the light as you approach the island,
following signs for "Beaches".
Reservations are a good idea. Benihana's Key West isn't the smallest restaurant on the island but it gets
packed. The bar area is miniscule, with room for maybe seven people at the bar and four or five more squeezed
in behind the bar stools. The bar area is also one of the main thoroughfares for waitstaff to the kitchen so
there's a constant shuffling of people to stay out of the way. It makes you really want your table to be ready
pronto.
OUr party of seven has reservations for eight pm but we didn't get seated until perhaps 8:45 or so. We
didn't get our food until a good hour and a half after our reservation time. Between waiting so long for our
reserved table and for our personal chef to arrive and cook our food, hunger-induced crankiness was setting in
on even the most benign and easy-going members of our group. By the time our chef arrived to cook our meal and
tell his jokes, he faced a tough crowd. Luckily, he was good with a bad audience and quickly had us turned
right around and smiling.
If you come for the excellent food at Benihana's, you won't be disappointed. If you were skeptical about the
entertainment side of the Benihana's experience, then you will come away a fan. Our chef faced a hungry group
of twenty and thirty somnething locals who work in the watersports industry. Their humor is salty and their
manner is frank. Stand a corny jokestry chef in front of our group, and he or she will get torn apart. But
this guy had good instincts and a great sense of humor to go with it all. He warmed us up and kept us laughing.
Our chef made the $30 per plate seem worth it, for the live entertainment you get nowhere else on the island.
On top of that, the food was to die for. Even the stir-fried rice was unbelievable. The filet mignon was
beyond delicious, as was everything else they served.
Benihana, 5 Months Later
Well, either we got very unlucky or the place has gone downhill. Went back and our chef was not at all entertaining and the YakiSoba was terrible! Our chef's accent was very thick Spanish and he mumbled. He also seemed distracted because he kept looking past our heads at something in the back of the restaurant. So very different from our first experience at Benihana's. The Yakisoba was drenched in too much brown sauce, and the flavors weren't blended at all. Between two of us who ordered it, there was one paper-thin size of chicken, about the size of a pancake. Couldn't they afford us another piece of chicken, at $17.50 a pop for noodles and cabbage?
The filet mignon and the Hibachi steak were delicious but seemed like they scrimped on the portion sizes.
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