I tasted ecstasy, whimsy, and freedom sampling Benihana’s new $15.95 ‘Power Lunch’

Ten minutes into my Benihana “Power Lunch,” I witnessed my first onion volcano, and felt a joy I’d rarely felt since I was a small child.

The allium extravaganza, in which a hibachi chef carefully stacks raw onion rings, douses them in alcohol, and sets them ablaze, is a beloved component of the chain’s razzle-dazzle culinary show.

Launched last month, the lunch deal comes with a guarantee — in and out in 45 minutes for less than twenty bucks or your meal is free. One might expect commensurate constraints on the creative freedom of the chef. But Benihana, which opened in 1964 and has around 100 locations or offshoots nationwide, appears to have remembered that its customers come for the show just as much as the food.

As I sat at the teppanyaki table on a recent weekday, surrounded by around a dozen diners that fell exclusively into three categories (children, parents, and office workers), I watched our chef, a tall man bedecked in bracelets and a heavy silver ring, toss onion rings onto a steaming grill. He coated them with oil and booze and readied a lighter.

I was a Benihana newbie, and I had been briefed on what might happen. Still, I was overcome with delight when the mushroom-shaped flame shot up toward the exhaust fan. My mind was a million miles away from the pile of work waiting for me at the office.

“AHHH,” I wrote in my notes. It was settled: The lunch deal was a hit.

I decided to try the deal a few weeks earlier, after coming across a story in Eater Los Angeles. In preparation, I asked two associates to accompany me to the storied location on West 56th Street in Manhattan. One is a former fast-food reporter who has sampled, conservatively, hundreds of chain restaurant meals; she offered experience, knowledge, and whimsy. The other is my boss, who offered plausible deniability in the event the chain failed to adhere to its 45-minute promise.

We had questions: Would the dining room be full of children between the ages of four and 11 exclusively there to celebrate birthdays? Would there be any traces of Benihana nepo baby Steve Aoki, musical or otherwise? Would we really be in and out in less than an hour? Would the chef toss shrimp into my mouth? Was it actually filet mignon?

There was only one way to find out.

The company says the interior of the first Benihana was “a 150-year-old Japanese barn.” This location, nestled between a parking garage and a nondescript corporate corridor, is a stone’s throw from Carnegie Hall and Trump Tower. Its dishwater-colored facade and vaguely brutalist vibe is reminiscent of an office park in 1990s Los Angeles.

As we check in with the hostess, I have ample views of the interior, because we are the only patrons in the entire restaurant. I begin to understand why the lunch deal might exist.

She gives us a menu explaining the deal: For $15.95, we could get chicken, shrimp, or tofu. For $4 more, we could level up to filet mignon or New York strip steak. Both options come with onion soup or salad, vegetable rice, vegetables, and dipping sauces.

Available only on weekdays from 11 am to 3 pm, the deal seemed directly targeted at office drones like me.

When I was a child, I associated Benihana with fancyness; trailing our hostess upstairs to the main dining room, I realize that association didn’t come out of nowhere. With its gleaming silver staircase, relative quiet, dim mood lighting, and dark-wood booze case, it feels like if Keens Steakhouse opened a location at LaGuardia Airport.

The spacious main dining area features around a dozen teppanyaki tables — communal areas with chairs arranged around a steel grill. We’re seated at a table in the corner, tucked away next to wide shelves dotted with knick-knacks. The high-energy Top 40 music coming from the speakers is what my boss later describes as “pretty close to what they play at Chuck E. Cheese.” (This is not a diss.)

I pull out my stopwatch and hit start. Game on, Benihana.

When our server arrives, I order the onion soup and New York strip steak. We treat ourselves to Diet Cokes. They come with a lemon and make me feel very elegant. (If you prefer your business lunches boozy, there are ample options.) My boss goes with shrimp, and my friend, feeling very elegant, opts for filet mignon.

A few minutes later, the server brings our drinks, soups, and vegetable rice. Cooking the fried rice is usually a star of the show during regular Benihana meals, but the 45-minute pledge demands some sacrifices — bearing witness to the dark arts of egg-scrambling, I’m not. The rice comes pre-portioned in small white bowls.

The rice is hot and peppery, and I could eat seven bowls of it. The soup, a dark brown broth with spring onions and mushrooms bobbing around, is salty and delicious.

Around minute eight, our chef wheels a cart over and starts preparing the grill. There is a lot of oiling and clanging and tossing of kitchen utensils in the air. If I was this chef, I would be overcome with stage fright, and that is the reason I am not this chef.

Watching him work prompts a spirited discussion about Benihana’s training process. Does it happen off-site, or are the chefs thrown out of the teppan grill and into the fire? Can regular people attend Benihana University? Wherever he learned, our chef seems to have done this a million times, and I feel at ease, despite my proximity to an open flame.

After he chucks the steaks and a tray of chopped onion, zucchini, and mushroom on the grill, he begins assembling the onion volcano, one ring at a time.

Again, I cannot emphasize enough how much it slaps.

When it’s done, he slices it up and adds it to the vegetable pile. The humble onion volcano is both impressive and utile.

Up until minute 11, the three of us are the only diners, but then a family walks in. One of the small children is carrying a Labubu, which feels apt. A minute later, a second family walks in, and they’re carrying a fistful of balloons celebrating a graduation.

As we watch our chef grill up our selections, we mull the origins of the lunch deal.

“I mean, look around,” my boss says, gesturing at the mostly empty dining room. My reporter friend posits that Benihana is best known as a dinner chain, and this is an attempt to break into the lunch space.

It may also have something to do with the chain’s new owners, One Group, who completed their acquisition in 2024. They’re trying to muscle into the fast-casual space with an offshoot called Benihana Express, and they’re also trying to build out their franchising strategy, per FSR Magazine. A quick-and-dirty lunch offering appears to be another gesture in this direction.

Around minute 14, our entrees arrive. The chef portions out the vegetables and protein onto our plates, and serves up mustard and ginger dipping sauces. The mustard sauce vaguely reminds me of chipotle mayo, while the ginger sauce is a watery concoction made with ginger, chopped onion, vinegar, lemon, and soy sauce. Both were tasty, but the ginger sauce was the table’s undisputed favorite.

Here is where I state for the record that I was not expecting that much from the main course. I would cut my own arm off for a good piece of steak, but it’s easy to overcook, and grilled veggies can be decidedly meh if they’re not seasoned well (or if they’re soaked in oil).

But a strong woman isn’t afraid to admit when she’s wrong. When we dig in, everything is hot, chargrilled, and well seasoned. The veggies are nice and crispy. The steak is a hair overdone — somewhere around medium — but for less than twenty bucks, I’m not going to complain too much. The portions are generous: My boss receives 11 shrimp, and my friend and I both get healthy-sized cuts of steak. After I sample the other dishes, I secretly decide that I chose the best option.

Around minute 17, after he delivers our food, our chef bids us farewell.

As we eat, I ask my companions for their takes so far. My boss says that his shrimp is “delightfully cooked,” and the vibes are “awesome.” My reporter friend says that she loves the “celebratory air.”

“The only reason I wouldn’t come every day is because I would want it to feel special,” she says. “Also, it’s very heavy.” I agree at the time, but later that night, I would go on to eat a big bowl of pasta and three large chocolate chip cookies while watching Tom Cruise almost die crawling around an airborne biplane, so I guess it wasn’t too heavy.

Lest you think we’re only here for the food, my boss spies one of the kids across the way clutching a giant poster cutout of his own head, and asks us why he has never done that for his own child. “You can learn new things at Benihana,” my friend replies sagely. It is, we agree, a Power Lunch and a Powerful Lunch.

While we pick at the detritus left on our plates, our server drops the check. I look at the stopwatch, and see that a mere 27 minutes have passed.

With tax and tip, the grand total is $89.23. It’s more than I would normally spend on lunch, but in my book, it’s well worth it. My other go-tos are usually sushi from a place near my office that once gave me a free mousepad, leftovers brought from home, a salad from Sweetgreen or Chop’t, or, if I’m feeling spunky, a sandwich the size of my forearm from an Italian panini shop. Save for the leftovers, all of those set me back between $17 and $25, and none of them feature a chef nuking an onion directly in front of my face.

“If this was near the office, I would come once a week,” my boss says.

A blonde woman at the next table munching on her own lunch deal agrees. “It’s a very good deal,” she tells me. She and her companion both work in the neighborhood, and they say they would come back on slower work days. “There’s an expectation that you’re hovered over the keyboard,” her friend says. The lunch special, it seems, provides an escape.

As I prepared to write this story, I decided I needed an expert’s perspective. I called up a friend whom I consider a Benihana veteran — she has a storied tradition of dining at the 56th street location every holiday season with a group of close friends.

I asked how she thought the Power Lunch compared to the regular Benihana show. Though she was disappointed by the absence of shrimp flipping, she said it seemed much the same.

“They do a condensed version, I think that’s fine,” she said — particularly at its price point.

I asked her if she would try it. “I’d go all the time,” she said. “I’d have meetings there. It sounds great. It’s really smart of them.”

The lunch deal works because it’s fast-casual with a twist. It provides something the Sweetgreens of the world don’t: theatricality, spontaneity, and fun. But the potential for danger is still there. Go too far in the fast-casual direction, and the magic is lost. Benihana can’t afford to go the way of Hooters — straying too far from its foundational identity.

“You don’t go there for the food,” my friend explained. “You go there for the entertainment. They have to do it on the grill, do the tricks, have the chefs.” As long as that component remained, she — and I — were sold.

Jake Swearingen and Kate Taylor contributed reporting.

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