Cleanliness of restaurant

Well, as you can imagine, it was very clean. They opened their doors on Friday (3 days ago). I can tell that the owners/managers kept a close eye on the cleanliness.

Quality and speed of service

Well, to begin with, they are a Coke restaurant! As those of you know who have been following along, I love my Diet Coke. I was very happy to discover that they carry Coke products!

When we came in we were immediately seated. Our server came right over and took our order. We really didn’t have to wait around long for any part of our order (except that the soup and salad came late).

There was a young bartender who was always right there ready to give me another Diet Coke. To him I say, “Excellent Job”.

All of the staff seemed very friendly and helpful. If they can keep up this kind of quality of service, they will succeed.

Quality of food

For those of you who have never been to this style of restaurant, let me tell you how it works. You place your order with your server and she gives the information to your chef. Your chef gets your uncooked food all prepared and brings everything right to your table.

After a few fire tricks (don’t play with matches!) and a few “egg” tricks (yes, raw egg tricks) he starts cooking up your food. If you have never seen this before, it is fun!

We ordered an Egg Roll appetizer and it was excellent! We really enjoyed our appetizer.

With dinner you get: Soup (very good), salad (okay), shrimp appetizer (good), rice (steamed or fried – we recommend the fried) and a friendly face.

For our entrees, my wife ordered the Sukiyaki steak (don’t ask me how to pronounce it!) and I ordered the NY steak and chicken.

The dinners and fried rice were very good. As my wife puts it, “I can eat just the fried rice and be happy!”. (She really likes their rice!)

Our recommendation is to definitely get the fried rice with your dinner (it is worth the $2.00 extra).

Overall Dining Experience

We enjoyed going here. The price was fine – 2 meals, 2 soft drinks and an appetizer for about $50.00 . They are brand new and haven’t announced they are open yet so they can work out any problems early. As you know if you read my biography, I used to run restaurants. I had also done several new restaurant openings and they can be crazy. I give Bonsai high marks for doing a “soft” opening.

The reason I gave only half of a block here is because of their portioning. My wife and I both felt that the fried rice portioning was small (especially considering the extra charge). Not to compare them with the other restaurant in town with a similar style, but that restaurant gives a lot more fried rice for the money and the fried rice (in our opinion) is one of the best parts! We both left a little hungry (my own fault possible since I really don’t eat all those veggies!).

We did get fantastic attention by the owners/managers. He even brought us out a pineapple boat for dessert. (Neither of us like pineapple so he traded it in for some ice cream!).

It is obvious the owners and staff want to have a fantastic restaurant and we feel they will. If they keep giving great service they will prosper.

I wasn’t able to find a website for them yet, but they really should have one made. I recommend that they list some information about their restaurant and put their menu on their website. They can go to our sponsor page and find a good company to make one for them if needed. If I find a website for them, I will update this page with the proper link.

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