Last night I went to the Benihana in Chandler for my birthday. It was the worst experience I have ever had a Benihana and I felt as if I had to write in. It wasn't my first visit, I have been there many many many times. I have a group of friends and we all go when its our birthday. We fill up a table each time. Last year my sister had a baby and as such we've had to adjust the time we normally go. I made a reservation for 5:15pm so she could come and it wouldn't interrupt my 1 year old nephews routine (and he would be in good spirits because as much as I love him I know that kids are emotional sometimes). All 6 people in our party left work early so we would all be on time. My sister and brother in law were waiting in the bar when I got to the restaurant. They had been there since 5 and the bar was empty expect for two tables.  They hadn't even been greeted by the bar tender for the 10 minutes they had been there before me. I checked in with the hostess at 5:15pm and she said it would be a few minutes so I went to the bar to order drinks. After about 10 minutes of being ignored by the bartender, I finally caught her attention and she snapped at me \"I'm the only one here in the bar, I'll help you when I can!\".  Finally able to get a drink, we were starting to wonder how much longer for the table. At 5:35,  with the incredibly rude hostess, in an almost completely EMPTY restaurant, we finally walked back up and asked how much longer we would be waiting. The two girls had been mainly ignoring the guests and talking to each other and the lone male host. They weren't smiling, or friendly, or nice in any way shape or form. We were told ,rudely, that it would be another 5 minutes. 15 minutes after that, with my nephew getting antsy, I walked up and said that we need a table (in the now still half empty restaurant and full lobby). She said they would be sitting us 'right now'. I verified that it was in fact 'right now, right now, not right now in another 15 minutes.' And she said yes. My two sisters had walked outside to keep my nephew busy and I brought her back inside, and I pulled our other 3 people from the bar (who had been buying drinks and appetizers). We stood waiting in the lobby another 10 minutes. A full 50 minutes after we had checked in on time we were finally shown to our table. Where our waitress asked if this was our first visit. We told her that we were old pros but she still felt it necessary to go over the ENTIRE menu with us and ignored us trying to tell her that we even knew what we wanted to order. We wanted to get our order in so my sister could actually eat dinner before she had to leave since it had taken us SO long to be seated. The restaurant wasn't full at all and yet the waitresses service was still so slow and she ignored us so often that we ended up stacking our own used dishes up off to the side. She didn't even refill our drinks. My sister had to leave without even eating her meal. Her husband stayed behind to bring it home for her. We finally had to flag our waitress down for our checks and she forgot to use my coupon so we had to flag her down again. We gave her our cards and she forgot to run one of them so we had to flag her down again to run it.  \n\nI have a lot of sympathy for service (especially during the holiday season) but it was the attitude of the hostesses and the lack of involvement from the manager that really upsets me. The manager (who kept walking by the hostess desk) didn't bother to talk to the girls who weren't seating people in a restaurant that was empty! The reason we made such early reservations was so that my sister and my nephew could have dinner with us. I know that my group and I have decided to not go to Benihana's anymore after last night. Had it been only one person with a bad attitude, we would have absolutely been forgiving but this has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I won't be going back.\n\n**Update in response to the company contacting me, I had actually emailed their customer service first. But didn't hear anything back. It appears that Yelp is monitored more often than the customer service email?