{"id":10409,"date":"2011-08-24T15:02:51","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T11:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=10409"},"modified":"2012-06-26T09:33:01","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T05:33:01","slug":"benihana-where-winning-means-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/food\/benihana-where-winning-means-losing\/","title":{"rendered":"Benihana: Where Winning Means Losing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"highslide\" onclick=\"return vz.expand(this)\" href=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/facebook-unlike-button1.jpg-w400h2691.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10410\" title=\"facebook-unlike-button1.jpg-w400h2691\" src=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/facebook-unlike-button1.jpg-w400h2691.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"498\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/facebook-unlike-button1.jpg-w400h2691.jpg 498w, https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/facebook-unlike-button1.jpg-w400h2691-145x93.jpg 145w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 498px) 100vw, 498px\" \/><\/a>You might recall the<a href=\"http:\/\/fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com\/2011\/01\/benihana-bashes-bloggers.html\"> brouhaha around Benihana Kuwait<\/a>, the restaurant that sued blogger Mark Makhoul for posting a mildly critical review of the restaurant. Mark, the man behind uber-popular Kuwaiti blog 2:48AM, defended himself in court and won the case.<\/p>\n<p>Benihana Kuwait, a licensee of US based Benihana of Tokyo (which has maintained an atrocious silence throughout), has appealed the Kuwaiti court&#8217;s ruling and has won on appeal.<\/p>\n<p>The whole sad incident has already created massive, <a href=\"http:\/\/fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com\/2011\/02\/benihana-kuwait-silence-i-sue-you.html\">global negative coverage<\/a> online for Benihana. The story was <a href=\"http:\/\/fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com\/2011\/02\/benihana-kuwait-silence-i-sue-you.html\">picked up by bloggers in the Middle East <\/a>as well as by a number of top global websites and media. Benihana, both franchisee and franchisor, could hardly have managed the whole sorry incident more cack-handedly. It&#8217;s even recorded on the company&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Benihana\">Wikipedia entry.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mark&#8217;s update post about the case is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.248am.com\/mark\/kuwait\/benihana-lawsuit-update\/\">linked here<\/a>. The court has awarded damages against Mark of KD1,000 &#8211; a pretty paltry sum, but an award nonetheless. He&#8217;s going to take it to appeal because it&#8217;s about more than KD 1,000, it&#8217;s about consumers&#8217; right to hold and freely express an opinion and I must say in his shoes I&#8217;d do exactly the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>What amazes me is how utterly, unbelievably stupid Benihana Kuwait is being in pursuing this tawdry case &#8211; and how idiotic Benihana of Tokyo is being by allowing these morons to drag its name through the mud like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ALEXANDER MCNABB: What amazes me is how utterly, unbelievably stupid Benihana Kuwait is being in pursuing this case &#8211; and how idiotic Benihana Tokyo is in allowing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,37,140],"tags":[759,4627,191,1410,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}