Benihana | Japanese American Steakhouse in Amwaj Rotana

The home of Teppanyaki, Benihana restaurants across the world attract diners to experience their live Hibachi stations where talented chefs create the most impressive dinner shows along with finger-licking Japanese American cuisine. Perfecting the concept of a Japanese American Steakhouse, Benihana offers a short but stunning variety of food across seafood, meat and poultry within their starters, salads, sushi, mains and signature Hibachi items. An exciting dessert menu, coupled with an extensive list of licensed beverages makes sure you are not void of your dining accompaniments.

Designed to portray Japanese culture with the wooden seating, floral upholstery and cherry blossoms, the restaurant adds a hint of American vibes with its interiors. The staff as well as chefs are extremely friendly, helpful and very good at recommending the best from their menu. Take a look at our experience in Benihana and find out what we loved the most.

Once we placed our order, we were offered a choice of edamame or prawn crackers to munch on. We chose the latter that came with a trio of soy, sambal and sweet chilli sauces on the side.

Our drinks order included fresh lemon mint and fresh watermelon juices. If you’re drinking, Sake comes as a highly recommended pairing with a lot of dishes.

Starters

Our first starter was the Volcano Lobster. Had we not know about the lobster, we would have easily mistaken these with dynamite shrimps. I’ve never had lobster in this form and I was thrilled with the texture, taste and presentation of these beauties. The volcano sauce coating the pieces was just the right amount of spicy and the lobster morsels themselves were super crunchy. Highly recommend this!

Next up were the Boneless Chicken Wings. Absolutely melt-in-your-mouth, these wings were one of the best I’ve had in Dubai. The sticky BBQ sauce glaze on the outside with the chilli garnish perfectly complemented the juicy tender chicken meat. So delicious were these, we literally licked the sauce off the plate.

Mains

After contemplating over whether we should order mains or just repeat the starters, we decided to settle with one noodles based dish and one rice and curry item.

The Yaki Udon Chicken was more than filling. The beautiful mix of browns and greens in this dish brought so much goodness with it, it was quite irresistible despite our much full appetite. I loved the addition of baby corn, green beans and everything else that rightly balanced the chicken and flat noodles.

Chicken Katsu Curry has always been my favorite and this one was no different. The crunchy outside tender inside chicken is so good, it is hard to say no to something so easy and satisfying. I loved the mushrooms on the side – they made the right accompaniment to the chicken. And the tonkatsu sauce was more than perfect. Our server recommended us to try the katsu with fried rice (instead of steamed), and we were not disappointed one bit.

Dessert

To top it off in true Japanese American style, we opted for the Triple Crumbed Fried Ice Cream, and it was simply magnifico! When the crusty layer blends with the cool vanilla ice cream inside, it creates this unique doughy flavor that is just so comforting without being overly sweet. This one is certainly a must have when you dine at Benihana, but if you’re big on appetite, you can also try out their Japanese Cheesecake.

Of course, to end this sumptuous meal, we sipped on a special ginger and chamomile tea concoction sweetened with honey.

Live Station Preview

Our visit to Benihana, unfortunately, did not include the live cooking, but we did get a glimpse of what we could expect with the chef’s special Volcano exhibit.

Benihana

Location: Level 2, Amwaj Rotana, The Walk, Jumeirah Beach Residence, Jumeirah Beach Residence (JBR), Dubai 86834
Contact: 04 4282000

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