Review: Bonto / Yo! Sushi Grand

Korean food is relatively underrepresented in Prague, with just a few restaurants serving dishes from the fiery, comforting Southeast Asian cuisine, and usually pairing it on menus with another regional, such as Japanese. There have been several new additions to the scene in recent months, however, such as Bibimbap Korea-Oáza in Karlín and Bonto in Smíchov, both of which serve Korean dishes alongside sushi menus. At Bonto, the emphasis in quality is definitely on the Korean.

Or should we call this restaurant Yo! Sushi Grand? There's a bit of confusion surrounding this place's name, at least from seeing its website, Bontorestaurant.cz, which has a certain menu, and then arriving at the location, which is bedecked in huge, glowing signs for Yo! Sushi Grand, which has another outlet in Žižkov (reviewed by former fellow Post food critic Claire Compton in April 2011). At the Smíchov locale, there's a small sign saying Bonto to the side, but the interior is definitely Yo! Sushi's, with the same whimsical, colorful paintings hanging on the walls and the same menu of Korean/Japanese - which, even more befuddlingly, differs from Bonto's online menu.

But, quibbles about the name aside - and so long as you don't get your heart set on some items, like the fried oysters, which were featured in the online menu but not at the table - Bonto is all right, and some of its Korean dishes are addictively tasty.

One such item is a well-known specialty of the cuisine, bulgogi, or marinated barbecued meat. At Bonto, it comes in either beef or pork, and the pork (Dwaeji bulgogi) arrived tableside sizzling and spitting on a platter. The pork strips were thin and fatty, marinated to tenderness in a fiery, magical mixture of soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil and peppers. Together with some soft scallions and bell peppers, it made for a comforting meal. The options for each bite were varied, too, by the presence of four bowls of traditional sides to complement the rice: in this instance, marinated eggplant, crisp seaweed, spicy radish kimchi and seasoned, spicy dried squid. The radish in particular provided a tart - if still hot in its own right - respite from the bulgogi's heat.

Another Korean classic, bibimbap, was served in a sizzling bowl, so hot that it took several minutes to be able to attempt to eat it, a wait that was difficult, considering the tantalizing smell. This version was with beef, although there was very little of it. What meat was present was shredded into tiny pieces, holding court on a mound of rice with portions of radish kimchi, black seaweed, raw red and green bell peppers, and strings of sautéed chwinamul, a leafy Korean vegetable. Perched on top sat a perfectly fried and peppered egg.

Mixed all together, and with dabs of gochujang (a thick, red sauce made from chilis and soybeans), the dish had a pot-luck feel to it. It held a certain level of spiciness but went well with a side order of kimchi salad, the veritable staple, made here with slices of cold, crunchy fermented cabbage held together by an intensely hot red-pepper paste.

One dish, Korean kimbab, is similar to sushi: a rolled seaweed casing surrounding rice and vegetables and commonly meat, and sometimes pieces of kimchi, as well. An attempt to order a kimbab roll off the menu, however - this one purportedly with beef - fell flat: It just never arrived, and when we asked the waitress about it, she brought out a different roll, one filled with egg, crab sticks, cucumber, carrots and kimchi. While serviceable, it suffered the same fate as the rest of the sushi items sampled at Bonto, in that it was lackluster and lacking in that ultimate freshness that makes good sushi great.

Most fusion rolls are priced between 200 and 300 Kč, which adds up pretty fast on the bill. There are quite a few sushi sets, however, combining sashimi and nigiri, and the sushi set "D" that we tried came prettily presented on a fan-shaped, bamboo stand with flowers of wasabi and cut carrots making for a colorful eye-pleaser. The sashimi was a bit too soft, though, lacking the bite of the sea and rather bringing to mind the freezer from whence it came. The large specialty roll with this set, however, was quite good: two-bite pieces topped with salmon and encompassing avocado, cucumber, carrot and chunks of smoked eel, which proved a treat. The latter fared better, however, in said rolls than on its own atop rice, where the texture came across as cumbersome, verging on rubbery.

Bonto, or Yo! Sushi Grand, is at least helping to make Korean food more accessible across the city.

Fiona Gaze can be reached at
fgaze@praguepost.com