Aoki, Rocky

▪ 2009

Hiroaki Aoki 

      Japanese-born restaurateur and adventurer

born Oct. 9, 1938, Tokyo, Japan

died July 10, 2008, New York, N.Y.

founded the Benihana of Tokyo chain of steak houses and thereby introduced Americans to “dinner as theatre” with a style of Japanese cooking known as teppanyaki, in which a knife-wielding chef entertains diners while flamboyantly slicing and cooking the food on a griddle built into the middle of a communal table. After representing Japan as a flyweight wrestler at the 1960 Rome Olympics (where he failed to make weight and never competed), Aoki moved to the U.S. to attend college on a wrestling scholarship. He switched to studying hotel and restaurant management, however, and used the money he earned by operating an ice-cream truck to open (1964) his first Benihana of Tokyo, a tiny four-table restaurant in New York City. He took the company public in 1983, and by the time Aoki resigned in 1998 (in the midst of an insider-trading scandal involving another company's stock), Benihana Inc. had expanded into an international empire with more than 60 outlets. After making a fortune with his restaurant chain, the dauntless Aoki raced offshore powerboats, and in 1981 he participated in and financially backed the first manned transpacific balloon trip, from Japan to California.

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