THE BONSAI

How about Uncle Billy's"

Blank stares in return

"Aww come on it might be good, it scores 84% on Urbanspoon"

"Okay we'll give it a try"

We scored a good parking spot in Roe st right in front of The Bonsai Japanese Restaurant.

"Hmmm what about Japanese?"

"But we said Uncle Billys"

"Yeah we did but maybe any good memories are those we had at 4am when we really really needed food and that's not a great way to judge a place is it. Maybe we've talked it up in our heads, whilst over here we have contemporary Japanese..."

So Japanese it was, greeted as soon as we walked in, no we didn't have a booking, table by the toilets it is then. Hmmm not a great start.

The Bonsai is set in an old Roe st warehouse. It's big inside and yet you don't feel lost, nicely laid out it looks great. The left side is filled with couches and leather chairs and has a cool small bar feel about it. Happy to report that the food was as good as the layout, if not better.

We started with 3 selections from their sharing plates menu. If you eat here this is the way to go, sharing plates all round. There's hot dishes, cold dishes, sashimi selections, you name it it's there and priced between 12 and 16 dollars for great value. We chose the wagu beef, salmon cerviche and the chilli crab claw balls for starters between 3 of us. All 3 dishes were fantastic, we could have easily dined just on sharing plates and next time I might do just that. This time however we ordered a main course each. A terri fish, a terri chicken and a crumbed pork. Again all wonderful dishes but the sharing plates were just a notch better.

We'd brought along two bottles of wine and sadly one had turned on us, so we ordered a Riesling from their small wine list as a replacement, a good drop and only 30ish dollars. Dessert was a green tea ice cream, a sesame ice cream (I think) and one of the best creme brulee's I've tasted in Perth in a very long time. Delish. I have to say that The Bonsai is seriously going down as one of my new fav Perth eating houses, it really was good food and good value. If you take the wine out of the equation it worked out to around 40 dollars each for 3 courses. Not bad at all

8 chopstick holders out of 10