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plate in front of you, chopped up into small pieces and then eaten with
chopsticks. An interesting experience.’ 18
The Misono steakhouse was soon imitated by other prestigious
restaurants, such as Mon Cher Ton Ton in Tokyo, Silk in Yokohama,
Kitchen Tonio on the outskirts of Nagoya, Rokuban in Osaka and Candle
in Kobe. 19 Newly emerging high-class Tokyo hotels, such as New Otani Hotel
and Okura Hotel, also began to furnish teppanyaki corners in their restaurants
especially to accommodate Westerners. Teppanyaki remained exclusive
and retained a foreign image. For example, The New Official Guide: Japan,
published in 1966, placed the original Benihana – the restaurant managed by
Rocky Aoki’s father – in the rubric ‘Western Cuisine, Barbecue’. 20
An important modification that Rocky implemented when introducing
teppanyaki in the United States was to wrap this new, essentially
un-Japanese restaurant style cleverly in the aura of Japanese tradition.
Benihana was basically a steakhouse with a difference – familiar food
served in exotic surroundings. The ‘exoticism’ was provided by the Asianlooking
staff in Japanese dress and the interior that replicated a Japanese
country inn, constructed out of building materials gathered from old
Japanese houses, shipped in pieces to the United States and reassembled. 21
Benihana obviously relied on (somehow refurbished) Japanese ethnicity as
far as the restaurant’s ambiance was concerned, but the food itself was not
much of a stretch from the American meal: steak, filet mignon, chicken and
shrimp could either be had as entrée items or in combinations, accompanied
by bean sprouts, courgettes (zucchini), mushrooms, onions and rice.
The marketing strategy of Benihana clearly aimed to dissociate itself from
the image of an aesthetically refined cuisine, as Japanese food was projected
in the handful of cookbooks that had hitherto been published in the United
States and as it was cultivated by restaurants such as Tokyo Sukiyaki. ‘No
exquisitely carved carrot slices. No wispy vegetables arranged in perfect
flower patterns. Instead, solid food in abundance ’ declared a Benihana’s
advertisement. 22 An important selling point of the restaurant was the showlike
entertainment provided by the flashy knife-swinging and pepper-milljuggling
chefs, cleverly linked in Benihana’s advertisements to a ‘samurai
warrior’:
It’s a little scary at first.
There you are sitting around this enormous table (which
turns out to also be a grill) when suddenly he appears. A man
dressed like a chef but with the unmistakable air of a samurai
warrior.
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