Japanese Oriental, located near Cazuelas Grill and Trillium Kitchen and Patio in the University District, closed quietly on August 13. The restaurant will reopen next summer, however, and will add another location with a new name: Bonsai.
“We regret to inform you that we will be closing for a brief while due to construction in the area,” read the last Facebook post from Japanese Oriental. “We will, however, have a new location hopefully not too far very soon … THANK YOU ALL for the business and good times we have all had here over the last decade or so and we will be back here when construction has concluded.”
This new location will inhabit the space recently (and also quietly) vacated by Upper Arlington’s Tot Vietnamnoms at the end of August. Owner Khanh Le closed the deal with Japanese Oriental co-owner Kim Aun on August 31, and will join his family in running Lan Viet at the North Market “for the next couple years.”
Bonsai is set to open within the next week, and while it goes by a different name, the menu will be exactly the same, said Japanese Oriental general manager Jack Snyder. Japanese Oriental, once reopened, will keep its name.
Snyder said that Japanese Oriental and Bonsai are family businesses, and he’ll likely run Bonsai when it opens.
Bonsai is located at 3108 Kingsdale Center.
For more information, visit Japanese Oriental’s Facebook page.
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