A show of support!

As a show of support to fellow blogger Mark Makhoul, who has had a lawsuit filed against him by the manager of Benihana Kuwait (Mike Servo) for $18,000 I am reposting Mark's blog entry with a link to it.

And my message to Mike Servo? Constructive criticism is a good thing! You do not know everything! People can always improve and if you're not willing to take feedback from your customers, then you're in the wrong business and I hope Benihana revoke your franchise, because you don't deserve to have it! Suing someone for having an opinion is nothing short of a joke! Would you do the same to a well known food critic that had a less that glowing review of your establishment published in a magazine, or would you sue them too?


YOU Mike Servo, yes YOU are responsible for the reputation of Benihana in Kuwait and if the food, service etc is not up to scratch then it's no one else's fault but YOURS!!!! The buck stops with you. So if people are less than satisfied, what are you going to do about it? Sue all of them for less than perfect comments on your feedback forms? There is only one person responsible for this mess and bringing the name of Benihana down and it's certainly NOT Mark Makhoul, who did nothing more than write an honest and frank account of his experience at your restaurant. What you should or any other normal, productive manager should have done, would be to take those precious words of feedback and learn from them! Learn how you could have improved the food, service, atmosphere etc to give your customers what they want.


But no, the ego got bruised and you thought you'd throw your toys out the pram in a big huff instead. I suggest you go back to school and learn a. how to take criticism, b. how to use it to benefit an establishment, c. management training  - as you certainly don't seem to have any.


Anyway enough of my venting.

Mark's blog entry:

My Benihana Experience .... by Mark Makhoul

A few days back I posted about Benihana opening up at the Avenues and yesterday night I decided to pass by with Nat and try it out. The service wasnít too bad for a restaurant thatís just been open for a few days and the staff were really friendly. The restaurant itself is made up of islands and bars with a grill in the middle of each one. You sit around the grill and the chef will come to your table and prepare the food right in front of you which makes things entertaining. Itís actually why I prefer sitting at the bar in Japanese restaurants in general, since you can talk to the chef and watch them put your dish together. The problem with my experience last night though was with the food, it was disappointing to say the least.

We ordered beef negimayaki for starters followed by an Orange Blossom maki and a Hibachi Chicken. The negimaki arrived looking good and was probably the best thing we had there even though I prefer Makiís negimaki which has a richer teriyaki sauce. The Orange Blossom was very ordinary, wouldnít order it again. Now the Hibachi chicken which is basically grilled chicken, that was the worst. The chicken was very chewy (I could swear it was undercooked if not raw) and tasted terrible. Even after I had the chef add some more teriyaki sauce in hopes of improving the taste it didnít work. I tried to dip it into the sauces that came with the chicken but it was hard to figure out if they were actually making things worse or not. Nat only ate one piece of chicken and left the rest while I needed my protein since Iím on a strict diet and forced myself to eat my whole plate (I can do that) but the after taste was really bad. Even the rice and the veggies that came with it tasted bad AND were under cooked. Once we left I considered picking up a frozen yogurt from Pinkberry even though I hate frozen yogurts but I just needed something to get rid of the aftertaste. A few moments later we ended up at Chocolate Bar ordering the gooey chocolate cake (bye bye diet).

I shot the two videos above of the chef preparing our meal. Benihana are known for the live shows they perform when preparing your dish so I was expecting to see [This] but ended up with the above . Would I go back to Benihana? No I wouldnít. Their sashimi and makiís are pretty cheap (KD1.5 for 5 pieces of Salmon sashimi for example) but there are two other Japanese restaurants at the Avenues, Wasabi and Maki, and I would prefer either one of those to Benihana.

http://www.248am.com/mark/kuwait/my-benihana-experience

Also please join this Facebook group calling for the boycott of Benihaha Kuwait

http://www.facebook.com/davecrane/posts/198787176799047?ref=notif&notif_t=feed_comment_reply