Benihana - La Costa

Do not go if you have a bigger group- I decided to take my daughter for her birthday dinner. We called the week before for reservations, let them know it was a group of 13, they said that is fine everything is set. My daughter was talking about this all week and was so excited. It was the worst experience ever. We sat at the table for over an hour and a half with no chef. When we would ask how much longer we got the same response that “the food was minutes away,” for over half an hour. The manager told me it was because our group was “so big” that it takes longer to get a chef over. No one warned us of this on the phone when we made the reservation. We ended up leaving before they could find a chef available and went to McDonald’s.

Ian was our server and he was awesome! GREAT SERVICE! Our chef was Daniel, he was also AWESOME!! Over great experience due to the awesome service from Ian and great food cooked by Daniel !

Service was great. Came in with a large group and were seated at the grill. Our chef, Aries, was entertaining. Some of the food was salty so I recommend asking for light soy sauce next time. but the quality of the seafood and filet mignon was excellent!

This was our first time visiting the Carlsbad location and we loved it! It’s spacious, clean, and the service is phenomenal. Daniel was our chef and I believe our server’s name was Kristen. Daniel did a fantastic job entertaining us all for my husband’s birthday dinner. My 6 and 3 year old sons loved all the tricks. And the food was delicious! We live right in between two Benihana locations and we will absolutely start coming here.

So I came alone around two o'clock on Wednesday. I was having a craving for some teppan. It was not very busy. When I got there, the hostess said they were short on cooks, and she would have to go check if they could seat me. She came back and said that if I wanted to eat. I would have to eat in the lounge area. It's not worth it. I wanted it fresh off of the tepping grill. It made no sense because they were they were cooking teppan at the table. I ended up just leaving without any teppan: