FISHBOWL - Bondi — Restaurant in Sydney

Having had poke bowls numerous times in Hawaii (whilst visiting relatives) I was excited to see that the delicious, fresh, and healthy dish is beginning to make its way to Australia.

A hybrid dish created in Hawaii for the tastes of the traveling Japanese, consisting of fresh sashimi, salad and rice, essentially donburi with sashimi.

I poked my senses into the closest poke bowl bar to quench a craving that had been building up since 2014. Pleased to see the fresh salad bar and fresh cubes of fish (but not the queue), I directed my attention to the menu up on the wall. My taste for wasabi massaging my brain muscle, I opted for the "green room".

The friendly staff were eager to help, with an efficient production line querying wants and scooping up food items into a mixing bowl, my bowl was completed in no time!

Time to pay. $20.30. Lolwut?! Turns out that those queries are all additional items not included in the bowl, not clarification of the bowl makeup. I had the same emotional sensation as buying airfares on Tiger!

After parting ways with my lobster ($20 notes are red, and have an Aussie nickname, $50 = pineapple), I was hoping it taste as premium as the price tag.

Having found a seat in the shade of the picnic shelters on Bondi beach, I eagerly popped the lid off the bowl. My mouth salivating as my eyes glazed over the nicely arranged bowl.

Chopsticks out, I poked around for a cube of tuna, some rice and topping. Down the chute.

Something fishy here, or not at all, I couldn't taste the tuna. I tried again with the same result.

Oh how I was disappointed.

There was way too much sauce! It was almost a soup of soy!

There was no wasabi zing.

There was no fresh tuna taste.

There was only soy.

My stomach now in charge, suppressed my tastebuds request to halt the saltiness, shoveling the rest of the bowl into my gut. Good thing I used chopsticks, otherwise I'd scooped the soy soup with a spoon.

If this was priced lower (like the low cost dish it is in Hawaii) it would be more excusable. But seeing as I could have gotten a restaurant quality lunch for the same price, I felt dissatisfied and a little burnt.

This dish could be so much better, with more wasabi and less soy, the flavor of the fish and the dish's namesake would have been a winner.

Kudos is due for the quality of produce, and presentation. But be weary of hidden costs...

What we ordered: Lemon Chicken Box and the Miso Salmon Bowl.

What we received: Dishes that had possibly just been taken out of a refrigerator.

The lemon chicken is completely unseasoned. I don't mean kind of bland, I mean that it is literally just chicken breast with ZERO spices. If I hadn't ordered it myself, I would have no idea that it was supposed to be lemon chicken. The dish consisted of just chicken breast, a bit of slaw, and plain white rice. It was slightly concerning since the restaurant indicated that rice was unavailable as a base for the other dish I ordered. Does this mean that the lemon chicken wasn't even cooked today?

The miso salmon, once heated, was quite tasty with a pleasant combination of textures. The slaw doesn't seem to match the flavour profile of the dish, but that's pretty minor. The soba noodles were absolutely overcooked, but were complimentary in flavour to the salmon. Definitely the better (and only edible) one of...

Ordered a salmon OG & turned up with no salmon! The delivery guy dumped the bag on the door step so all the contents fell out of the bowls & into the delivery bag! Ring the number on receipt & guy answering says he no longer works there! Only option to remedy this is fill out a webform or go to the store. Are you kidding? What an expensive & poor customer experience… never wasting money on your business ever again! … As further followup on this fishbowl tells me to go back through Uber for refund, but ordering through this maps listing order button uses another service called Ritual & no where visible to request a refund. I don’t want to come back to your store for a free bowl either. If I could give zero...