Ono's

Today my co-workers and I went out to lunch at Ono's Cafe in Bonita. Here's another review here and Yelp's here. I hadn't been here in two years and from what I remember, I wasn't too impressed because all they served were "wraps" or sandwiches, which I don't like. They didn't even offer beef items - just pork, boring ass chicken and dried out salmon. One of my Anglo co-workers really liked it there so we went because she raved about their wraps and their "smoothies" with boba. She was pretty vanilla and I'm pretty sure she had never been to any Asian eatery on Convoy Street! Different strokes for different folks. I went another time with a friend during dinner out of curiosity and we ended up ordering from the appetizer menu because the entrees didn't really excite us.

Recently, I remember seeing a tiny blurb in the paper that the owner revamped the place - expanding into the neighboring space, building the fixtures and furniture himself and blah blah blah. This is located on Bonita Road in an old 70's era looking strip mall. It's right behind the stand alone Wells Fargo building, and right next to the House of Nine Dragons Chinese restaurant. An interesting side note - in the same stripmall, on the side of the road, there are two fake "dinosaurs" (one yellow and one blue) on the right hand side (if you head east from 805). The yellow dinosaur was vandalized several years ago - it's head was bashed in. The community chipped in to help fix it. The blue dinosaur is relatively new. In the late 60's or early 70's, there was a boy who made these dinosaurs. Sadly this boy ended up dying young as a teenager. There are only a few of these dinosaur sculptures left in old Bonita. Anyhow...I digress...ME WANT GUM GUM! LET MY DUM DUM SPEAK! So, because I heard about the recent renovation and the expansion of their menu items, I wanted to go there and drag my co-workers along...
Ironically, we ending up sitting on the front patio which was nice and shaded, instead of inside. I was more interested in seeing the revamp. I felt uneasy whipping out my camera in the presence of my co-workers, so I refrained from taking any photos inside the establishment. I did check it out when I went to the bathroom. It had a tropical feel - dare I say island kitsch? I think the owner did a great job with the decor, especially with the new upholstered booths. They looked pretty comfortable. They had a regular menu - I noticed they were a bit pricy ($5.95 for a plain old California roll, $6.95 for lumpia appetizer), but they probably have to jack up prices to pay for their rent. Bonita's not a cheap place to have a restaurant I guess. Their slim lunch menus were mounted on a thin wooden board with bamboo backing. Most of the entrees were either $7.99 or $8.99. One of my co-workers ordered a drink called the "Candy Bar" (don't remember the price). Although it's meant to be served hot, she ordered it iced. It's coffee with macadamia nut flavoring, caramel and chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Looks and sounds fattening. My co-worker's Kalua Pig ($8.99) - Slow roasted shredded pork with mixed cabbage, jasmine rice and cucumber salad with wasabi mirin dressing. Actually two of my co-workers got this and really liked their entree. The mound of shredded pork was topped with a Green Giant like pubic tangle of alfalfa sprouts while the rice had a garnish of spicy radish sprouts. The Kalbi Ribs lunch special($8.99) - Grilled marinated short ribs served with jasmine rice and kimchee salad. I asked for a substition on the kimchee salad - I got the cucumber salad with the wasabi mirin dressing instead. These had some sort of rice noodle garnish on top. I liked the salad dressing - tart with a tiny bit of a kick. By the way, I asked for a substitute because I don't really like kimchee. Even though our server said they do not serve actual kimchee, it's more of a regular salad with kimchee flavored dressing. Either way, not a kimchee fan. Their cucumber salad was julienned - different than Yokozuna's cucumber salad which is cored cucumber which is then cut into thin half moons. My thinly sliced kalbi ribs - the lunch portion has 4 pieces while the dinner has 6. These were pretty good but a bit thin. Some pieces had a lot of fat too, not good unless you want to clog up your arteries. One thing I didn't like was that the plate, although an attractive oval, was way too small, making it inconvenient while cutting the meat. It sucked cutting meat on top of meat. No empty space on the plate to do this. I made a suggestion to our server for larger plates in the future.

The portion sizes were just right. It wasn't an overwhelming amount of food, nor was it a tiny starvation portion either. I thought my plate was alright, but the rice scoop was a bit small. Hey, I'm Filipino and I eat rice dammit. One other thing, this was priced at $8.99. I could have got kalbi ribs with rice and 4 or 5 types of panchan at that take out place in Zion for $5. I was paying for the hi-falutin' area I'm telling you.Our new co-worker had the Teriyaki Chicken lunch special ($7.99) - Grilled marinated chicken breast served with jasmine rice and Asian slaw (hmmm, what made it Asian???):
We all liked our entrees, but I know of better places to get this kind of food. It was still worth a look see. Our server was very nice and explained all of our questions in a friendly manner - but later, she ended up giving us the wrong receipt (which was fixed later - damn, the first receipt had a lower bill too! Shouldn't have said anything! Kidding). I didn't get to see everything on their menu but they had some interesting items on there plus your standard items - sushi rolls and teriyaki sauced meats. I noticed they had malasadas on their dessert menu!