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Bonsai review Rate it
The team in this small establishment produces a range of dishes, a good proportion designed not to spook the local palate: cheese gyoze (cheddar in pastry with soy-chilli dip), prawn tempura, vegetable tempura, beef teriyaki or California gaijin-zushi (featuring avocado and crabstick). If you want to go with the raw fish, however, Bonsai serves sashimi, maki-sushi and nigiri-sushi, making it feel more like Japan rather than Japan-catering-for-Scotland.
Bonsai details
Area South
Transport Nicolson Street-North Bridge buses
Telephone 0131 668 3847
Open noon-10pm Mon-Fri; noon-10.30pm Sat, Sun.
Main courses £6.
Comments & ratings
An evening visit was unfortunately a mixed experience: generally good food that was marred by some appalling service and a lengthy wait for a relatively simple order.
My main problem was a rather overbearing American waiter (perhaps the proprietor?) who insisted on squeezing onto the couches between customers or settling down on spare seats around diners' tables when taking orders. Frankly creepy. He also snapped at us trying to correct our pronunciation (which I've always been told is quite good by Japanese friends) and flippantly suggested we order different things, as if we were imbeciles and did not understand what we were ordering.
Having travelled around Japan I can tell you this is as far-removed from the polite, formal manner displayed by staff in even the humblest of eateries. We then had to wait 40 minutes for our food to start coming out, with no explanation.
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