Watery soup, claggy rice and bored iceberg lettuce, TOM PARKER BOWLES won't be going back to Benihana anytime soon!

It's always a worry when the high point of one's dinner is the ritual incineration of an onion. But then at Benihana in Chelsea, there's rather a lot to worry about. Because this international teppanyaki chain, famous for its knife juggling, spatula flinging, wisecracking chefs, was the very height of chic in 1964 when Hiroaki Aoki, a former wrestler, opened his first restaurant in Manhattan. Guests from the Beatles to Muhammad Ali would sit at the teppanyaki table and watch as the chef cooked their dinner before them. Bad jokes and tableside theatrics were all part of its charm.

Fast-forward six decades and that charm has worn rice-paper thin. On a muggy September evening the vast Chelsea basement, scented with burnt fat, is half empty. Service is the high point and Hamza, our Iraqi waiter, pure charm and professionalism. There's some decent sake, too. But the irritation begins with the menu, all gushing, over-familiar hyperbole: 'The Perfect Trio!' 'An Excellent Choice!' 'Absolutely Delicious!' and 'Everyone's Favourite!' Urgh!

We start with a watery bowl of onion soup, which has only the most fleeting, wistful relationship with said allium. There's an iceberg lettuce salad that's a study in fridge-cold ennui, and a claggy bowl of rice. Tempura prawns are clad in a batter more suited to repelling bullets than adding delicate crunch, while sushi and sashimi are sub-supermarket dull. Then Matt, our chef, arrives, and in between a relentless flow of bad gags ('Hello, is it me you're looking for?' he sings as he takes his place behind the steel griddle) he sears a few prawns, cutting off their tails and attempting to flick them into his red toque. Only one hits the target.

But Matt, like Hamza, is lovely, and the gags all part of the tired Benihana schtick. He cuts and clanks and flings and hurls, adding butter and soy sauce to our dinner. The fillet steak is fine, the chicken eminently forgettable. A couple of lozenges of cod are doused in a cloyingly sweet miso sauce. Then the onion 'volcano': sliced rings piled up in a hollow cone, doused in a mix of oil and alcohol and set alight with a fiery whoosh. We ooh and aah, but the end result is both charred and undercooked. Apparently the place is heaving at the weekend. I won't be back to find out.

About £60 per head. Benihana, 77 King's Road, London SW3; benihanainternational.com