Bonsai Grill — Restaurant in Arlington

I am shocked to find this place has so many good reviews. First of all the sushi is terrible, genuinely the worst sushi I can remember having. The rice is mushy, while the ingredients on the inside that should be cold, are not. An avocado cucumber roll should not be warm in the middle. The cucumber somehow is also mushy. The eel still has bones in it, which is a clear indication of low quality ingredients.

The service is ass. We waited 20 mins for her to come take our order. she is friendly enough but slow and seemingly ignored us for other (possibly regular) guests. We also did not get all the food we ordered and sat around waiting for her to do side work and greeting new tables before bringing us our check.

The teriyaki chicken was an... interesting experience. The chicken is cooked but in an incomprehensibly indistinguishable way. I can tell the chicken IS cooked but how is a profound mystery. No sear marks, obviously not grilled or boiled. Maybe steamed? Either way, it has an unsettling texture at best and was obviously prepared without seasoning. For some bizarre reason it is served in a sizzling fajita skillet, then topped with a watery, underwhelming "teriyaki flavored" sauce.

Other than that, the music is low and mellow. The sushi bar itself is cutely decorated and the elderly Japanese sushi chef behind the bar regularly sipping tea reminds me of one of those "cool lowfi beats to study/relax/sleep to" animations on YouTube.

Hardly makes up for all the other glaring flaws and I dread eating in this area if places like this are this highly regarded, while leaving this much to be desired.

Impeccably clean, albeit oddly...

We are experienced sushi eaters, so while passing through town and wanting sushi, we chose Bonsai Grill based on the reviews. SUSHI. WAS. GREAT. We had the sushi sampler, and loved it. As it should be, the fish slices dwarfed the rice wedge. (Sushi chef here knows his/her craft!) The fish was amazing. salmon, yellow tail, tuna, eel…all were excellent. Not wanting to leave (even though we were satisfied), we ordered the shrimp and vegetable tempura. I would have rated this restaurant 5 stars for the sushi, but the tempura was absolutely confounding. The shrimp were not tempura battered at all. They were breaded, not tempura battered. (I regret that the picture doesn’t show the shrimp.) The vegetables appeared to be fresh and battered with a tempura batter, but…well, see the photo — each piece was very dense and tasteless, definitely not the light, crispy tempura anyone would expect. We sent the whole tempura plate back, telling the otherwise friendly and efficient server that we LOVED the sushi, but were befuddled by the plate of purported “tempura”. Thinking it was obvious that we didn’t intend to pay for the full plate of tempura we sent back, we were surprised to see it still on the bill. It was eventually resolved (tempura taken off the bill), but damn…the...

The staff is incredibly rude and the sushi is overwhelmingly mediocre. They don’t offer the same courtesies as other restaurants when the food is gross. When my friend and I tried to send one item back that was mushy, we were treated as if we were trying to steal food. Not only did the waiter not take the item off the bill, he also bagged it up for us to go without our knowledge. The manager didn’t offer to remake it or ask what was wrong with it and instead pointed out the server’s error much to our surprise. We were forced to pay for nasty food we didn’t eat or desire to take home on the premise that we’re “wasting resources.” So we paid and left the item on the table. The server also never came to refill our drinks or check on us even though we were the only customers. Lastly, I’ve finally had my first experience getting yelled at by restaurant staff and you can have yours too if you decide to eat here. We notified them that we would post a review and the manager yelled at us again that we couldn’t do that while snatching the bagged items. I’m very disappointed and will...