Bonsai is not a new restaurant for Carnival, however in the past it has been solely a sushi restaurant. As I am not a HUGE sushi fan and mom is not a fan at all, we typically do not feel that paying for this restaurant is worth the cost. With the new ships being built, Carnival is adding Teppanyaki to the Bonsai experience…and I LOVE teppanyaki!! Mom is still not a huge fan, but she was willing to suffer through for me!
Reservations for this were hard to come by, and we were all anxiously awaiting our confirmations to ensure we had a spot. The restaurant only has two teppanyaki grills, with eight seats each so only 16 people per seating. I believe that they do two, maybe three seatings each night so you can imagine that it was a hot ticket on our 5000 passenger sailing. Please note that if you are looking for sushi only, there is plenty of seating!
The sushi menu is priced a la carte. You just fill in your selections and hand it off to your server. Seems easy enough and plenty of people really like it so it will be on my list to try eventually, just not this trip!
This trip was all about Teppanyaki!
This is a set price…$32. For that price, you get all of the things listed at the top of the menu under “Your Experience Begins With” including:
The Teppanyaki white shrimp…He did take off the head, after all of us demanded it! We then received:
Pork Belly Yakitori. This was Amazeballs!!!! And even though I really do not like asparagus, apparently if you deep fry it, its not so bad! Up next in the included portion of our meal is
Spicy tuna on the rocks. So I don’t like raw tuna, hence my lack of interest in the sushi side. That being said, this was not terrible. I would not go out of my way to order it, but if you like tuna this is a good dish.
And then the option of Miso soup or salad:
A big part of the teppanyaki experience is the chef and how interactive he is with the guests. Now, I love teppanyaki and I go to my local Japanese Steak House fairly often as well as jumping on any shipboard experiences I can. So I can tell you that while I hear a lot of the same jokes no matter where I am, some chefs are certainly more engaging than others. Our chef was a lot of fun.
And of course, we had a lovely server as well:
She actually gets huge Kudos from me for working out an issue with my drink package before dinner! Wanna keep me happy? Keep the wine coming!
Next up were our entrees. I had the filet and shrimp combination and mom had the salmon. Both came with fried rice and grilled veggies.
My apologies to all, but there is no picture of the salmon…I tried to take one and mom nearly bit my hand! So let’s just all assume that it was pretty darn good!
And last but not least, the dessert bento box.
I can tell you that the top right is a green tea ice cream, and the bottom left is a chocolate covered strawberry. The rest are some combination of Japanese desserts. I did try all of them. None really stood out, but I am not the person to ask as dessert is really not my jam.
Overall, this dinner was yummy and super fun. I really do love Teppanyaki so I hope Carnival puts this on more ships as they dry dock / create new ships.
Sibling Revelry 