Mar. 20--Benihana chefs fired in a labor dispute with the Japanese steak house's management have won their case. 

A National Labor Relations Board judge ruled recently that management at Benihana's L Street restaurant in downtown Anchorage wrongfully terminated the chefs in December 2001 and that the cooks should get their jobs back, along with lost wages. 

The restaurant engaged in unfair labor practices and should cease and desist from coercively asking any employee about union or other legitimate activities, wrote Thomas M. Patton, an administrative law judge in San Francisco. 

"I'm glad it happened. I knew we had a good chance to win," said Steven Bae, one of the seven chefs involved . 

Benihana's owner, John Blomfield, said he needed more time to review the decision before commenting. Blomfield has the right to appeal. 

The dispute centered around Benihana's tip policy and problems with the ventilation system. The restaurant had a policy to split tips 50-50 between waitresses and chefs. The chefs saw it as unfair because cooks and kitchen staff far outnumbered waitresses, so servers routinely walked away with far more money than those who prepared the food. 

The other problem centered around the ventilation hoods above the grill tables. Chefs cook the food in front of customers, often tossing knifes in the air and performing other stunts as entertainment. Seven chiefs who went on strike in December said the ventilation hoods never worked right and airborne grease from the grill was causing them respiratory ailments. 

When the chefs brought their concerns to Takeo Okamoto, general manager at the time, he got angry, according to the chefs and a case history written by the judge. Okamoto, who no longer works at the Anchorage eatery, interrogated the employees about who was behind the complaints and whether they were trying to unionize. 

Okamoto retaliated by firing one of the chefs, Romy Mendez, prompting six other chefs to walk off the job and picket the restaurant the following day, the judge found. Benihana brought in replacement chefs from out of state and reopened the steak house within days. The fired chefs tried to get their jobs back but the restaurant offered only limited hours and mostly nonchef positions, they said. 

The chefs turned to the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Local 878 for help. The union investigated and filed a case with the National Labor Relations Board. The case was tried in Anchorage in July. A vote on whether to unionize Benihana employees failed, said Marvin Jones, the union head in Anchorage. 

The seven fired chefs are due back wages, but any salaries they've earned in the meantime will be deducted, Jones said. 

All but one of the chefs have since moved on, said Bae, who started Sidewalk Kitchen, a mobile Asian restaurant at Seventh Avenue and G Street. Mendez was too busy grilling steaks at his new job at Orso to talk, said his girlfriend, Ana Lucero. 

"He hopes that they don't appeal it," she said. "He's waiting to see what happens next. Otherwise, he would love to be cooking tepanyaki again." 

Tepanyaki is the colorful style of Japanese cooking in which the Benihana chain of restaurants specializes. 

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