Benihanas has adequate vegan options, however nothing particular special – but if family are going there don’t worry, they have a decent selection. You won’t starve by any means, they have some vegan sushi, vegetables, edamame, and other options available.
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Just keep in mind you might need to do some customising — but don’t worry we’ll tell you how to do that below to make everything mentioned vegan-friendly and all good-to-go for you.
Vegan Appetizers & Sides at Benihana’s:
- Seaweed Salad
- Brown Rice
- White Rice
- Fried Rice (off-menu, see below)
- Edamame
- Spicy Edamame
- Sauteed Vegetables (off-menu typically, see below)
- Sushi (see next section for this)
For the Fried Rice, while the vegetable fried rice and chicken fried rice are obviously not vegan friendly you can simply ask for a vegan version of it, without meat or egg, and they’ll happily make you a vegan fried rice with sauteed vegetables.
For the sauteed vegetables, same as the fried rice, simply just ask if they could give you some sauteed cut up veggies and they’ll usually be glad to help you out with this, you may want to specify you want them sauteed with soy sauce if you want that as otherwise they may not use any — and soy sauced sauteed veggies are better if you’re eating them with rice in my opinion.
Vegan Meals & Sushi Options:
- Spicy Tofu Steak (not all locations, but most of them)
- Fried Rice (see below, must be veganized)
- Cucumber Sushi Roll
- Vegetable Sushi Roll
- Custom Sushi Roll (they roll it fresh, you can ask for an avocado roll for example)
- Various Salads (see salad section below)
Keep in mind just like with fried rice as a side you must ask them to make a no-meat no-egg version, which they’re always happy to do, to make it vegan friendly.
Vegan Salad Options at Benihana’s:
- Wasabi dressing
- Ginger dressing
- Balsamic vinegar
- Olive or Sesame Oil
- Seaweed Salad
- Benihana’s Salad (Confirm Vegan, most locations it’s naturally so)
- Imperial Salad (Confirm Vegan, should be naturally though)
Keep in mind the Seaweed salad doesn’t really need a dressing and is quite small, it’s more of a side than a salad, but technically it’s a salad to Benihana’s so we included it here as well. The other two vegan-friendly salads mentioned above are quite reasonably sized and combined with a side or sushi it’ll be quite a big meal, enough to share a piece of sushi or two with friends or family. Also while it’s a personal preference thing, I’d recommend the Ginger dressing over the others, to me it’s the most flavorful and works best with a veggie salad – but I’m not a fan of oil or wasabi dressings, so I may be biased.
Vegan Dessert Options at Benihana’s:
- None
While we’re listing none here, technically some locations may have vegan desserts — so it’s worth asking if you’re interested in having one, however most locations will not have a dedicated vegan option for dessert, so we don’t want to mislead people listing items only available at one or two benihana’s locations.
You can generally order a smoothie (specify no milk) and have that as a dessert if you want, however we’ve heard from some people that not all locations can make the smoothies vegan for whatever reason, so I wouldn’t 100% count on it either. But who needs desserts anyway, pssh.
