Bonzai Japanese Steak & Sushi

Called to order sushi to go, the girl taking my order stopped multiple times to make sure my choices would be safe. So happy!

Staff had no clue what GF was, didn’t have GF soy sauce and the only thing they could give me was tuna sashimi. They said everything else had soy sauce or gluten (even though she seemed to have no idea what gluten was).

Celiac friendly?

No

I gave this three star even though I chose not celiac friendly bc there's so much potential. They bad gluten-free soy sauce on the cart and my food was made with it after everyone else's. It would be so easy to just make everyone at the table's food with the gluten-free sauce at the same time and thereby eliminate the obvious cross-contamination. But I haven't had hibachi cooked at my table since my diagnosis so this was SO FUN for me! Even if it was obviously unhealthy. They tried and it is a HUGE step in the right direction. I hope they keep making positive strides and I will totally go back and encourage this!

Celiac friendly?

No

My husband and I stopped here on Christmas. They did not have a gluten free menu available. the server said everything on the menu could be made gluten free - which was obviously not true because some items, like dumplings, are made from a wheat based product and yakisoba noodles typically also have wheat (in the US). The miso soup made my husband sick within minutes - he is not gluten intolerant so we don't know what was in it that made him ill. I didn't eat the miso. The service was slow but we didn't think too much of it because it was really crowded. Our food was prepared in the kitchen instead of the hibachi table as the previous reviewer mentioned but it took almost an hour to come out. The server said they usually have tamari (gf soy sauce) but they were out of it. The food was OK but not great and very bland because there were no gf sauces. Overall, it was a very expensive boring meal of cubed chicken and steak with plain rice.

Celiac friendly?

No

I'm new to gluten-free eating, so this was one of my first restaurants to ask for accommodations. To my surprise, our server, Shu, seemed very familiar with what I needed. Although her accent made her a little hard to understand, I could tell she knew exactly what she was talking about. She explained that I could order from the hibachi menu but that it would not be cooked in front of me as part of the show for the rest of my group. It would be cooked in the kitchen on a separate grill without soy sauce which contains gluten. I could only have white rice because the fried rice has soy sauce. She also made sure that I had the gluten-free soup. She brought my salad without dressing (which apparently had gluten) so I asked for a bit of avocado to use as dressing. She kindly brought me almost half of a sliced avocado! I mashed it up with salt and pepper and was good-to-go.

Our hibachi cook was also good because he didn't accidentally forget that I couldn't eat the food that he was cooking. For everyone else, he would playfully throw bits of food for them to catch with their mouths or he would put food on their plates. At one point I was about to try some sauce that had been put on a plate in front of me and he saw out of the corner of his eye. I couldn't understand him very well but apparently he was warning me not to eat it because it had soy sauce in it. I appreciated that.

The gluten-free chicken hibachi was good. The chicken was tender and juicy, but the flavor was not as good as I remember it being when I've had it with the yummy soy sauce and fried rice. Afterward I asked Shu if I could bring my own gluten-free soy sauce next time so that I could not miss out on all the flavor. She said that I could definitely do that without a problem.

I plan to go back! The hibachi show is wonderful and I had a great time.