Benihana is Japanese for Really Big Deal

The twins obsession with Benihana started when they were in PreK 4.
A couple of their friends came to school reporting Benihana as their favorite restaurant. Our kids are always eager to jump on a bandwagon, so they started asking to go.
Benihana is in Sugarland; we are not in Sugarland. But there is lots of traffic there. And it is a solid thirty minutes from our house.
We told our kids Benihana was too far away, that is was more of a special birthday restaurant. (Which it is! Lots of grown ups go to Benihana for their birthdays because this is the day they eat out with their extended families. They chose goofy Japanese chefs over awkward conversations).
By telling the kids Benihana was a “birthday place,” they imagined it as some sort of Chuck E. Cheese, Disneyland place. They began to fantasize about HOW MUCH FUN THEY WOULD HAVE when they could finally go to Benihana.
So, last year, on their fifth birthday, we planned to go. We loaded up the car with grandparents, brothers and sisters and mom and dad. Only we didn’t quite get the car loaded.
Elisabeth was ready first. She and I were waiting in the car for some of those brothers and sisters to find their shoes and go potty twenty-seven times. She was getting antsy, so I suggested we walk to get the mail. As she stepped out of the car, she tripped on the diaper bag, and landed chin-first onto our concrete garage floor.
Several hours at the ER and stitches followed. This year there was no Benihana.
This only raised Benihana’s mythical legend. “IF WE COULD ONLY GO TO BENIHANA! BUT I GOT STITCHES!!”
For the next year, Benihana loomed large in our family as the holy grail of restaurants. Every time we went out to eat, we’d ask the kids, “Where do you want to go?” Without missing a beat, they’d scream, “Benihana!”
We tried to explain about traffic and it being thirty minutes away. Our kids sensed all this made Benihana more special, like all the traffic in the mythical land named Sugarland was headed to Benihana to have a blast. Without them.
Finally, this year, on the twins’ SIXTH birthday, we were ready. M made a reservation for the evening of their birthday. We would all travel to Sugarland, eat questionably authentic Japanese food, and laugh at the goofy chefs.
But then, Elisabeth had a meltdown when we wouldn’t let her take a bath with Catie. We tried to explain to her about six o’clock reservations, and the TRAFFIC IN SUGARLAND, and how she and Catie take two hours in the bath, and how the timing of all that wouldn’t work. When her howls matched the decibel of a dying chicken, we told her SHE WAS NOT GOING TO BENIHANA. ON HER BIRTHDAY.
To say she was crushed would be an understatement. After screaming for the better part of an hour, I held her little, sobbing body. Over and over she said, “Going to Benihana is my dream. It’s my prayer!”
BUT the next day was M’s birthday. He announced he really wanted to go to Benihana! (I’m sure he actually wanted to go to the World of Beer restaurant open less than a mile from our house, with NO TRAFFIC, but he loaded up his family for a special Benihana dinner because he is da man.)
And we went! We went to the holy grail of Japanese silly dining. The girls, ever dramatic, walked in holding hands. “We are finally here!” they said. “THIS is Benihana!”
The boys were also thrilled. They made silly boy noises and jumped around a lot.
The Benihana experience was all the kids had hoped it would be. The secret to our kids is that it’s all mind over manner. If they believe something to be awesome, it is. And vise versa. This is why they hate any baked goods containing pumpkin. Long ago they decided it was “gross.” And no amount of sugar is changing that.
The Benihana experience only had one flaw: we were seated next to two kids from Sugarland. They lived less than a mile from the restaurant, with NO TRAFFIC to get there. They were with their divorced dad, who took them to Benihana on Monday nights. Not just for birthdays, not just for special occasions. Benihana was their McDonalds, their Dennys. These kids were so used to Benihana, they even left before the free ice creme.
Which totally blew our kids’ minds.
And made them believe Benihana might not actually be Japanese for Really Big Deal.