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Benihana restaurants operate a sushi counter. The enterprise was set up in
1964 by Aoki Hiroaki, better known under his Americanized name Rocky
Aoki. Rocky came to the United States in order to pursue a wrestling career,
but ended up as a successful businessman. In 2006, 98 Benihana restaurants,
franchised or company-owned, operate worldwide (78 in the United States)
and many more are run by its imitators all over the world. 15
Benihana was the first teppanyaki-style restaurant that opened outside
Japan. Teppanyaki literally means ‘fried on a steel griddle’. It implies a style
of dining that allows the customers, who are seated around a large steel
griddle plate, to watch meat, shellfish and vegetables being fried in front
of their eyes. This style of dining became fashionable in Japan during the
1950s and ’60s and its invention is credited to Fujioka Shigetsugu, the
founder of the restaurant Misono in Kobe. 16 Shortly after Japan’s capitulation
in 1945, Fujioka began to run an eatery that specialized in okonomiyaki
– wheat pancakes fried on a steel griddle with shredded cabbage and other
186
A teppanyaki chef
and his audience,
Leiden, 2006.