On the last night of Blog World Expo, I hosted the first, and hopefully not last, John Chow Blogger Dinner by inviting some fellow bloggers to dine at Benihanna Japanese steak house. The blogs that showed up include Egontron, Zac Johnson, Darrin Carter, Gary Lee, Ms. Danielle, Mad Whips, Neil Patel, Nate Whitehill and the gang at Unique Blog Design. All together, we had 15 people. Shoemoney showed up to say hi but couldn’t stay.
I told everyone dinner was at 7PM but when I went to make the reservations they told me they were booked out for that time slot so I have to move it to 6PM. This didn’t create too much of a problem since Benihanna is inside the Hilton Hotel, which is right next door to the convention center.
Benihanna is the kind of Japanese restaurant where the chef cooks the food in front of you. It’s fun to watch the chef slices and dice the food while trying to make very unfunny jokes. The food quality is average – it doesn’t have a chance in hell of matching Spago and I doubt they ever intend to. Because of the size of our group, we needed two tables and two chefs. Here are some more pictures and a video.
Dinner for 15 came to, well, I’m not going to tell you. Instead, why don’t you take a guess. The person who come closest to the actual amount of the bill (including tax and tips), without going over, will win a signed copy of An American Hedge Fund. Guess away.