The two Benihana branches in Kuwait each have their own day: half price on all sushi and sashimi — Monday at the Avenues branch, Saturday at Sabah Al Salem. Which means the day you go decides half the bill.
The branches do not close together
- The Avenues — ground floor, phase two, Rai: eleven in the morning to ten at night. Phone 22597095.
- Sabah Al Salem — Pixel Mall, block 1, street 136: midday to midnight. Phone 22289393.
Two hours apart at closing, one at opening. Anyone wanting a late dinner has one option, not two.
The published prices
- Miso soup — tofu, wakame and spring onion: 1.250.
- Edamame — soy beans boiled with salt: 1.350.
- Spring roll with house plum sauce: 2.750.
- Tempura udon — prawn, potato and carrot with noodles: 2.900.
- Fried gyoza: 3.000.
- Hot and sour seafood soup — prawn, scallop and mushroom: 3.500.
So every starter is under three and a half, and the gap between the cheapest and the dearest is 2.250.
Where the name came from
The original restaurant was opened by Yunosuke Aoki in Tokyo, named Benihana after a red safflower he saw among the city’s ruins after the war. His son Rocky Aoki — born in 1938 — took it to New York in 1964, and it became the largest teppanyaki chain in the world.
Teppanyaki here is not a kind of food but a way of serving it: the chef cooks on a plate in front of the table itself. Hence the restaurant’s line: “my kitchen is your table”.
Photo: a plate of sushi. By Kyle Nishioka, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: the official Benihana Kuwait site.
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