Bentonara

I am not a sushi fan at all but the other 3 girls I was going to eat with all love sushi. Plus their menu had several non-sushi options. We headed to Bentonara on Belmont. Bentonara is a BYOB restaurant but it also serves wine, beer, and sake. You cannot BYOB beer though, only wine. And if you want wine with dinner, bring your own. The wine on their list was only identified as chardonnay or pinot grigio which leads me to believe they're not that good. Corkage is $10 although there was apparently a special and it was only $5.

For appetizers we had edamame, gyoza (pan-friend dumplings), vegetable tempura, and soft shell crab. The edamame weren't salted enough. The soft shell crab was delicious. The gyoza were pretty good. And since I don't really like vegetables I didn't try the vegetable tempura.

My tablemates ordered 3 sushi rolls - the rainbow maki, Chicago maki, and volcano maki. Concensus was the volcano maki was amazing. I even loved it and I'm not a sushi fan. The volcano maki has shrimp tempura, snow crab, tempura flakes, and volcano sauce. It was all fried up too which is likely why I liked it. The other two got so-so reviews.

I had the shrimp tempura for dinner. It was very good.

Bentonara is a great neighborhood restaurant although probably not something worth travelling to from far away. Although I am not a sushi expert so what do I know. If you aren't a sushi fan they did have many different options on the menu for you to try as well.