Benkay Japanese Cuisine

I first found out about this restaurant from
. If I had known this restaurant had this many bad reviews, I wouldn’t have purchase the certificate nor would I have given this place a time of day. Firstly, this place is all about money. They want to get as much money from the customer as they can. Secondly, this place is not about quality. I dreaded, being food poisoned, the whole time I was there.
The deal from the certificates states a min. order of $ 35. However when I presented to the waitress, she asked if we could order more than the min. My response to her is, I wanted to try this restaurant out and I’ve had my share of venturing into bad japanese restaurants in the area, however she still insisted that we order more. She made me — the customer, feel REALLY uncomfortable about eatting there. They had a full house when my gf and I got there, however she kept insisting that we order more, because she isn’t making any money from our order. Gift certifcate ($ 25) + additional ($ 10) + Tips & Tax ($ 10). To me, I felt who the hell is she to tell me what to do, as long as I’m honoring what the certificate states.
When we were waiting for our food to come, I noticed the half prepared yellow fin tuna was left ontop of the kitchen counter. It stayed there the whole time I was at the restaurant. Possible food-​poisining quickly raced across my mind. I was wondering how long has that fish been out of the fridge/​freezer before I caught glimpse of it? Secondly, how much longer is that meat going to be left unattended?
When the food came, there was a distinctive fermented taste in the rice. It seems as though the rice was left untouched in the kitchen for many days in warm temperature. The portion is definitely less compared to other Japanese restaurants (esp. for the price that they’re charging — $ 12 for spicy spider roll, $ 14 for something that looks like a rainbow roll). At the end of the meal, the chef offered pineapple slices. It was definitely a good gesture. However when we started tasting the pineapple, we notice another distinctly taste from the pineapple. It was a very fishy taste. It seemed as though the chef used the same cutting board without wiping off whatever water was on the board before preparing the pineapple.
I would not recommend this place to anyone. Their service is inadequate and improper. Their food quality is poor, and their cleanliness is very questionable.

I brought a coupon from
in Sept and decided to give this restaurant a try.
Even with the coupon, I don’t think our food worth the price:
— Besides small portion, our Teriyaki Chicken and Teriyaki Beef both came out cold.
— We waited 30 minutes between Miso soup and entrée. We were the only customers there at the time.
2 stars because service was OK.

Nice atmosphere, adequate service, but, unfortunately, the food is not worth the price.
My wife, 2 kids, and I went to Benkay for dinner on a Saturday night. We were the first customers. The furnishing and decorations looked very nice and new and the server seemed very attentive. Here’s what we ordered:
— Benkay House Salad: cereal bowl of iceberg lettuce with a slice of avocado with some sesame soy dressing. Ok, but really not worth $ 5.95.
— Benkay Deluxe Dinner with Teriyaki Chicken: the chicken was a bit dry and the sauce was too thick and sweet. It just didn’t have the good grilled chicken taste. The sashimi which came with the set was fresh but sliced way too thick. Salad was just a bit of iceberg lettuce and some sesame soy dressing.
— Green Dragon roll: about 7 pieces of tempura/​imitation crab roll topped with avocado. It was pretty but way not worth the $ 12.95.
— Yaki Udon: fried udon with beef and with a taste of ketchup. It tasted pretty good.
— Gyoza: this was ok deep fried gyoza
With an extra miso soup and tip, this came close to $ 60! At this price, there are tons of better Japanese restaurants in the area.

I came here with the bf hoping to find something that would make this place stand out from the 3 491 462 967 Japanese restaurants along El Camino. Well it sure did stand out, but not for good reasons.
First of all, I couldn’t get over how empty it looked inside. The place is small, but these people definitely did not make good use of the space they have. I think there were seats for no more than 20 people, yet I felt like I could have comfortably fit a few more tables. The interior is clean and the décor is decent though, so I’ll give them credit for that.
So, the service started off pretty good and gradually declined. The waitress decided to ignore my table and instead, paid all her attention to someone, who must have been a friend, over at this other table. There were only a couple people inside, so there was no excuse for neglect.
The food was just as disappointing as the service. My bf and I split a roll, that wasn’t good enough for me to remember, and a combo with beef teriyaki and some other stuff. The beef was a joke. Not only was it tough to eat, but the sauce they called «teriyaki» was the most interesting and unauthentic version I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if they tried to make it this way, but it was this gelatinous, gravy-​like sauce that started to coagulate towards the end. Teriyaki… I think not.
Thanks to a
coupon, we only paid $ 15 for our dinner. Otherwise it would not have been worth it at all. Needless to say, my hunt for an awesome and unique Japanese restaurant along El Camino is still on.

Three words. I LOVE THIS PLACE. oops. thats four words ahha.
Me and my cute Unilocaling buddy Hannah decided to go check out some new restraunt for us to rave or rant about. We were SUPPOSED to go to Beque, because my REALLY good friend Grace told me that it was an awesome barbeque place.
We were debating about which restraunt to go into because there were SO many places in that plaza that we wanted to try out. haha
Interestingly a CUSTOMER of Benkay says OH, go to Benkay! Its so much better than Beque! ahha So me and my buddy decided to walk into Benkay.
and i was SO glad we did!
Once we walked in, we realized that it was really small. Space was limited but it was finely decorated. There were maybe 5 tables with chairs. We were seated by a really nice waitress in the booths. The chairs were sooo COOL! :) it was really BIG and Black. :) talk about shexy.
We didn’t know what to get so we just ordered sashimi. (which we can pick out! AWESOME!!) We got Tuna, White Tuna, and Hamatchi. OMGGOODDDNESSSS Hamatchi was SO GOOD! OH we also had Saba. IT WAS SO GOOD!
We took our sweet time because Me and my buddy had to talk about a few things. hahaha.
The fish was fresh. It was cut right in front of us. It felt REALLY good in my mouth!
We also had the XXX roll. SUPER SPICY! a KINDA dangerous name that has a dangerous taste! :)
Bugs Bunny– good and HOT. Deep fried deliciousness :)
Tuna Roll– It was OK. Wasnt as great as the other ones. but delicious.
Green tea ice cream: :) YUMMMMYYYYYYYYYY PERFECT DESSERT for a delicious dinner like this.
AND all this for 53 dollars! I know it might seem like a lot and stuff, BUT you have to consider the quantity and the quality! The plates that they serve it on is HUGE! They also have odeng soup which im DYING to try.
ANOTHER PLUS! Its open till midnight! Which is EXCELLENT because we end work at 10ish. GAH :)
This place is definately our new hangout :)

As I told myself that i will have to try this place just one more time before deeming it a place I will never go to again, well I did and here it goes.
This time around there were two other groups there that seemed to be family friends of the owners and were all having a good time. Nonetheless we were still served well.
I ordered the Tempura Shrimp Udon for $ 8. It came with a bowl the size smaller than that of the regular phở bowls. The single shrimp was also dunked in the Udon so it totally killed the whole tempura experience. My previous experience was that the shrimp was always placed in a separate dish to preserve its crunchiness. The soup and noodles were good and my cousin ordered two rolls that were good but he said it wasnt filling enough so he ordered a meat udon.
Overall I give this place 3 stars now, still nothing wows me but atleast if there is a next time I know what to stay away from.

I ordered my standard Rainbow Roll when I try out a new sushi place. This way, you can measure some of the priorities of the restaurant.
1.) Fish fresh?
2.) Fish cut early in the day or just for your order?
3.) California roll more like mayo delight? Is it about the freshness of the fish or covering up with mayo?
I was pleased on all accounts. The fish was very fresh, and was definitely cut after I ordered it. And California Roll base was not mayo nation.
Now, I’ll start to order some sashimi and other rolls.
The service was delightful, the cleanliness impeccable.
I will be back. And I love that it is walkable from my house.

NOT IMPRESSED with the quality of food, nor the quality of service we received. Service is non-​existent, they bring you the food and you’re left alone for the entire night. No check up on if everything’s going well, no refill on tea. The sashimi is just ok in both freshness and the grade of the fish. The maki rolls were drizzled with spicy mayo-​based house sauce, we ordered 3 types of rolls (nemo, titanic and chuck norris) and by the 3^rd one I specified that i dont want the «house sauce» on the rolls anymore, it still came with sauce on top. I’m pretty sure no one can taste the flavor of the fish with all that mayo sauce. Maybe that’s the chef’s point so they can charge grade A fees with grade C fish. I will not be revisiting this establishment.