The Benihana restaurant chain was founded by armature wrestler Hiroaki Aoki, whose nickname was Rocky. While we’re perfectly fine having jobs as frozen food reviewers, we have to admit that wrestler/restauranteur is a pretty interesting double career choice. Anyway, if you’ve ever picked up the Benihana Rocky’s Choice frozen meal and wondered who exactly Rocky is, well, now you know.
We’ve had a little bit of trouble picking this dish up, as it seems to be sold out often. Thankfully, we had a lucky grocery order and we managed to hit pay dirt. Or pay frozen meal… So today we’re checking out the Benihana Rocky’s Choice to see what it’s all about.
This isn’t our first Benihana frozen meal, of course. We’ve also tried the Yakisoba Chicken and the Hibachi Chicken Rice. We hope to eventually try everything in this entire line.
Anyway, the cooking instructions for this are pretty basic. Chuck the thing into the microwave for two and a half minutes, give it a quick stir, then pop it back in for two more minutes. This shouldn’t give you any trouble at all. (If you want to read the cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
As you might be able to see in the image above, this comes out a little bit soupier than we were hoping. That’s potentially not the worst thing in the world — it depends on how the rest of this goes, we suppose.
So what does a world-famous wrestler/restauranteur get in his hibachi? As it turns out, Rocky was a fan of chicken, beef, zucchini, and onions over rice. For some reason, we were expecting a little bit of sweetness, but this goes for a saltier, more soy-based flavor.
The steak here is excellent. It’s soft, mouthwateringly juicy, and loaded with beefy flavor. We had a piece or two that were a little chewy, but the consistency seems pretty alright for the most part. This does end up a little overly salty tasting, though.
The chicken is great too, and the saltiness actually does it a lot of good. Even though this is a dark meat, it has enough flavor that you might be tempted to think it’s a dark meat. There is a little bit of a chalkiness to the inside of the meat, though that can be mitigated if you make sure to pair the chicken with a juicy piece of zucchini.
And boy howdy, is this some juicy zucchini. We’re guessing the moisture from these veggies is why our meal ended up a little bit soupy. The consistency of the zucchini is great, though. It has just a little bit of crunch to it, though it’s mostly soft, and it also benefits from the saltiness of the soy sauce.
There’s some jasmine rice here, which is a decent choice, though we think just a little bit more rice would have soaked up more of that zucchini juice to prevent the bottom of the dish from turning into soup.
This meal contains 340 calories, which isn’t bad at all. In fact, we were a bit surprised to see how low the calorie count is here. The sodium level, however, is less surprising. With 780 mg, this has slightly more sodium than your average frozen meal.
The Benihana Rocky’s Choice frozen meal is a decent, low-calorie bowl of food. While we do wish it were a little less soupy and perhaps a little less salty, what’s here is actually pretty good. Rocky had good taste, if this dish is any indication.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen food, check out our package scans below.
