I try the top-rated Bonzai Japanese restaurant in Leicester

Feeling adventurous, I had a look on the Deliveroo app to see which Japanese eateries in Leicester city centre were popular. There was one, Bonzai in Hotel Street, that had a great score and a lot of delicious-sounding dishes.

Located in what used to be Le Petit Four across from the Market Street McDonald's, it's a place I've walked past many times but with its blinds down and its doors usually shut, it never seemed that welcoming.

It didn't look like the kind of place that would have a 4.8 stars, beating both Yo! Sushi and Wagamama on the Deliveroo ratings system. There were a lot of great things to chose from and I went for gyoza dumplings, some batter balls with octopus and a main dish of teppanyaki fried noodles with duck.

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Obviously a big part of Japanese food is the presentation, but even arriving at my home in plastic containers, it all looked great. The dumplings, served with sesame dipping sauce, was the first thing I tried, sitting in the sunshine trying to remember how to use chopsticks before remembering I'd never been able to.

The great thing about dumplings is you can just stab them. Run them through with one chopstick, dip them in the sauce and then take a bite.

I don't know what it is about Japanese dumplings but they're among the most satisfying things to eat in the world. The insides were meaty and delicious and they had been finished off under a grill to give them a very slightly charred taste that added a whole other dimension.

Next up were the takoyaki batter balls, which were covered in a small amount of sauce that gave a sharp flavour, contrasting with the soft, almost milky, batter. Inside were the diced bits of octopus, which would have seemed like nasty chunks of gristle if I hadn't been expecting them.

To start with I wasn't really enjoying them, having never had them before. But after I got used to the weird clashes of very different tastes they were really satisfying - although not so easy to spear with a chopstick as the dumplings had been.

Next up was the massive main course - a big tub full of udon noodles in teriyaki sauce with large, fried chunks of duck. Because duck costs so much in the supermarkets, it's a meat I hardly ever eat, but it's one I can't get enough of.

It would take some concentration to ever mess up a duck dish and this one was a great one. Switching from chopsticks to a fork, I shovelled it in - the meat, the fat, floppy noodles that showered my chin in juice, all the beansprouts, as well as egg and cabbage.

Inevitably it reached a point where all the duck was gone and it rapidly dropped from being an amazing dish to just being a nice dish. But luckily I had one more treat.

For a pretty reasonable £2.99, I'd also ordered a cup of freshly-squeezed mango juice. It was sweet, cold and thick - but not too full of bits of mango flesh to stop it going up the straw. It was like a fresh, delicious desert at the end of a great meal.

Verdict

Bonzai, which has a sister restaurant in Nottingham, serves great Japanese food, including lots of sushi dishes as well as the cooked stuff, and it all seems very authentic. Not that I've ever been to Japan, so I can't say that for sure. But it definitely tastes like it's probably very authentic. 5/5.