Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Home Thai Sushi Bar Bonita Springs

The best Thai and sushi can be found at home –Home Thai Sushi Bar, that is!
Home Thai Sushi Bar opened two months ago, and is doing well. Centrally located in Bonita Springs on the north side of Bonita Beach Road, a few blocks west of US 41 at the former site of Alessio's Trevi, it already has it share of regulars at the booths and at the sushi bar.
The setting is attractively simple, with light wood floors, off-white walls, and lighting from dropped red lights. Wooden chairs are comfortable, and tables are set with white tablecloths and black napkins. While I and my guests sat at a booth, other regulars preferred to sit at the eight sushi bar chairs, perched to see the chefs artistically prepare a variety of attractive dishes.The big 16 page menu is well organized, offering a broad variety of authentic Thai and Japanese dishes. During the evening, diners got to meet Owners Barry Schrayer, (chef) Mee and Goi (“Pinky”) Wichitsakulrat. as they made the rounds of tables, introducing themselves.

We picked a mix of Thai and Japanese dishes, and drank Chang beers.

The Thai Fresh Roll (9) has fresh Romaine lettuce, cucumber, sweet egg omelet, and imitation crab wrapped in moistened rice paper. It’s served with Thai Fresh Roll Sauce, with an earthy-sweet touch of tamarind, soy sauce, and perhaps mirin and sugar. This is a very light, fresh and tasty appetizer. The dipping sauce has a wonderful blend of flavors to complement the delicate rolls. We save the sauce to go with other dishes.
Tuna tataki (11) is beautifully served on a freeform glass dish, with 3 mm thin sections of lightly seared tender very good quality tuna arranged in delicate spirals, served with a light citrus and soy Ponzu sauce, scallions and sesame seeds. The delicate tataki medallions are wrapped around hair-thin slivers of carrots and daikon radish. In the center is a lovely rosebud of tuna. Nice.

The Sushi Mori Combo (19) is a California roll and nine pieces of sushi, with sushi glass with decoration coming out of it


The Fire Dragon Roll (14,50) is a large sushi platter, with long rolls composed of shrimp tempura, asparagus, avocado, and scallion, topped with formed tuna, and dusted with crisp tempura flakes for contrasting texture, attractive appearance and fresh taste. The roll’s savory ingredients' flavors are well balanced with the mildly spicy tuna covering and flakes. We looked at the plate carefully, and noticed the carrot carved into a swan, the artfully carved orange, and even the pattern on the wasabi! Attractive squiggles of carrot and daikon root complete the attractive presentation. This is a highly recommended keeper!
The surprise with the Fire Dragon is the Tuna Rock served with it in a martini type glass. This is a tuna mixed with spicy mayonnaise, scallions slivered bell pepper and masago (caviar) The tuna is wonderfully cooked, and the sculpture-like presentation is quite pretty. (All plates that went by during the evening are attractive).
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“Somebody sure knows what they are doing, and takes pride in every thing they do,” said a lady from the sushi bar, who walked 30 feet to admire this creation, then returned to her seat. We sent over two pieces of Dragon Roll so she and her partner could have tastes. A few minutes later, she came by with two pieces of her Christmas Roll (13), with a quartet of shrimp cucumber, cream cheese and avocado, wrapped first with nori and then masago caviar, topped with finely sliced surimi , and a swirl of mayonnaise. “Tis the season to be jolly and sharing!” Throughout the evening, people at other tables got up to look at the attractive creations on other neighbors’ tables, and find out what the names were. Where else are customers that curious and just plain friendly?
One customer raved over his red curry shrimp (17), and his partner flipped for their Fire Dragon Roll He let on that they are writing a cookbook with a great title, and some catchy ways to make the recipes more fun-you meet everyone dining out!

Tropical Fried Rice (20) is portion large enough for two, more than filling a scooped out half pineapple with ample rice, shrimp, decoratively sliced tender squid, chicken, pineapple chunks, red bell pepper, cashews, raisins, onions, scallion, carrot, cilantro and egg. The Works! All is harmoniously matched, and each ingredient can be individually tasted and appreciated.

Duck Basil Sauce, one of the “Home” specialties (21), has a good amount of lightly fried, crisp, almost translucent Thai Basil leaves as a topping, and also interspersed between tender boneless portions of a half duck. The skin is crisp. The sauce is amazing, a marriage of bell pepper, onions and scallions in a wonderful chili garlic sauce. We polished off most if this while it was still hot! This is the most filling, savory dish of all that we tried. Highly recommended as our favorite!. Others said the jumbo garlic shrimp is their favorite-either way, it’s said to be hard to choose between the two!

SashimiWith 16 pages of Japanese and Thai offering and artist-chefs, it was no wonder that people got up to see and learn what the others were having.

A Combo Plate
Owners Barry, Mee and Goi came by to the tables during the evening, and our neighbors said they only had compliments to give.

We’re going back to Home Thai Sushi Bar for more. This is an attractive setting with great service and top quality in Thai and Sushi. Who’s the competition? The nearest similar Asian spot is Bonita Springs’ David Wong’s Pan Asian, featuring cuisines from across Asia. Naples’ Sushi Thai is miles away. All three are quite good.

3300 Bonita Beach Rd., Suite 101 Bonita Springs, 948-4663, homethaisushibar.com/

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi everyone,if you are looking for thai food in Bonita Springs,I want to tell you guys to come to Home Thai Sushi Bar Restaurant. My husband and I (we are Thai) just went there yesterday, their foods are so good and authentic Thai,if you guys love spicy foods, you should come here.Beside thai food they also serve sushi and also cooked Japanese food. We ordered Duck Basil, Mama Pad Kee Mao and Deep Sea Roll.......hmmm they are delicious. I would love you guy to try this new restaurant in town. I'm sure that you gonna love to come to this restaurant.

Anonymous said...

I second everything and then some! Good food, good people and good wishes for this cool place!
jersey girl

jersey girl said...

Everything and then some! Great food, great atmosphere and great people!