Updated in 2025
_TI***y7After never eating at Benihana before, and also being a lover of Japanese hibachi, I was very excited to eat here. I looked at the menu for days. I planned on treating my mom and myself to an amazing meal. I had already picked out what I would eat, planned on spending at least $100 on my filet and shrimp, and drinks, an appetizer, and planned at least a $20 tip. This was just for my meal, my mom was going to spend an equivalent amount. We were excited and thrilled to eat a great meal. When we walked into the restaurant at 5:05PM, there was no one working at the host desk. We had made a 5PM reservation on opentable, and we were 5 minutes late. We saw what looked like 8-12 employees in the restaurant, but no one said a word to us. They did stare, but no one made any attempt to attend to us, After about 7 minutes, the host came and told us to sit in the bar, it was open seating. There was only two other people in the restaurant when we sat ourselves in the bar area. After seeing various cooks and other staff talking with each other, and looking at cell phones, we had been sat at our table for over 10 minutes and no one had said a word to us, besides the hostess. So, i get up to find the awesome hostess to see if we had a server, and she seems puzzled why our assigned server hadn't spoken to us. The hostess said she would go find of server. 3 minutes after this, the female server stopped by our table and said she is finishing up a guest check, but would be with us. She then gave that couple their ticket, they paid, and she went to the register. 5 minutes after that, she was conversing with a black male employee, and laughing while looking at her phone, and my order had not been taken. it had been almost 30 minutes since we entered the restaurant, and our order still hadn't been taken.Waitress told us he was helping us out by being an employee of there. I don't know what that was about, but I was a customer looking to spend over $200 and only wanted decent service
_TI***u4My wife and I scheduled childcare for 2.5 hours so we could celebrate our anniversary. With 4 small kids, time is always tight. We scheduled a table for Southern Social and told them we were celebrating our anniversary. We dropped off our kids, and when we arrived, on time, they tried to sit us at an outside patio table. The temperature was 94 degrees with a heat index of 110. There was a national weather advisory in the area due to the temperature. There only 1 other person outside, it was entirely empty for obvious reasons. We explained it was too hot and asked for one of the many empty inside seats. They explained they were all reserved. I guess they knew other customers would never sit outside and would never disrespect them by putting their reserved seat in a sauna. I imagine that since we were younger than their usual crowd, they just thought they would keep the habitable seats away from the more "lower class" guests. In conclusion, they refused us an inside table despite our reservations. We wasted a lot of time and finally went to Ruth Chris where we had a great, albeit shortened, dinner. We rushed through and got our kids, but the absolutely terrible behavior of this restaurant deserves to be called out. Don't waste your time unless you look rich and successful, I guess. I'll be keeping them off my list in the future.