Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

CLOSED. Now houses similar Samurai Japanese Steakhouse, (502) 412-3339, not yet reviewed.

*** Benihana
1510 Lakeshore Court
(502) 426-2432
It's hard to believe that almost a full generation has passed since Benihana came to Louisville as one of the first restaurants in the then-new Plainview development, not to mention one of the city's first Japanese restaurants.

Time has served it well in the looks department, we found on a recent visit, with some 20 years of landscaping and nature's slow process having turned its exterior appearance from a plastic-style suburban eatery into something with a hint of the grace and style of a Japanese garden.

Turn left as you come in the main entrance, and you enter the large, slice-and-dice teppanyaki room that made Benihana famous. Turn right, though, as we did on a recent visit, and you'll find Benihana's large and inviting sushi bar, a less-well-known feature that's frankly, for me at least, a far better reason to make the trek to the 'burbs.

The large room has a Japanese farmhouse look, with red-paper lanterns, wood and bamboo. The big-screen TV over the bar had a cable-television movie playing silently, while American country and western music emerged from the sound system at a reasonably discreet volume. The semicircular bar has ample space a dozen chairs, with fresh sliced fish displayed in glass-fronted coolers, neatly covered with plastic wrap.

The sushi menu is of average length, with about three dozen choices from $2.50 for tomago (a tiny omelet on a sushi ball) to $8 for a chef's special roll. Sushi and sashimi combination plates are $12 to $19.

We put together a hearty sushi lunch of seven choices plus soup and steaming green tea, which is served in a big, heavy pot that keeps it hot.

Miso soup was good, but different from the usual thick and salty style. It was a thinner broth, served in a large bowl with a lot of edible seaweed.

The sushi was consistently impressive: Well-made, impeccably fresh and carefully formed, generously proportioned with a good fish-to-rice ratio.

Saba (mackerel, $3) showed a strip of pretty silver skin and a good meaty taste. Appropriately chewy tako (octopus, $3) was wrapped with a strip of nori seaweed for color and texture contrast. Maguro (tuna, $3) was fine-grained, deep red and beefy. Hamachi (yellowtail, $3) was delicately sweet and textured. Fried shrimp roll ($5) included a tasty, crunchy piece of shrimp plus all the goodies of California roll - avocado, crab "shapes" and a crunchy bit of cucumber.

Throughout the meal, and especially as he noticed that we appreciated his work, the sushi chef added artful touches that went beyond assembly-line sushi making. Unagi (eel sushi, $3) cames with garnishes and a squirt of sweet sauce; the fried shrimp roll, an "inside-out" roll with rice on the outside, was decorated with dabs of green and orange fish roe to add color and salty-fishy flavor bursts of caviar.

Frankly, it's all too easy for "foodies" to pass Benihana by because of its franchise status and the rather tired tableside grill routine. But make that right turn into Benihana's sushi bar, and you won't regret the trip. An excellent sushi lunch for two was a competitive $36.57, plus a $7.43 tip. $$

(August 2001)