Udonlicious - Koya, Soho

I tried to get into Koya once, many months ago when it was freezing cold only to be told I would have to wait outside for at least half an hour. I took my empty belly and disappointment down to Chinatown and drowned my sorrows in roast duck and sweet and sour pork. Now with the sun making it's usual peek-a-boo appearance I lugged a sister and nephew to slurp down some noodles and nourishing broth.

Hot Japanese Tea

After days of chugging down Italian, Lebanese, gallons of taramaslata, lusciously beautiful anchovy stuffed olives, Turkish delights, handmade chocolates, wobblingly creamy burrata, roast dinners with gloriously crunchy roast spuds in beef dripping ... it was time to take it easy and rest ourselves and Koya seemed like the ideal place to do so. Serene and orderly as only a Japanese restaurant can be, we managed to bag ourselves a seat before the lunch crowd arrived. Truth be told it hadn't been very hard to navigate ourselves around London on the days following the troubles (except Oxford Street ... shoppers have no fear except the thought of not bagging a bargain). Specialising in fresh udon noodles, Koya has intrigued me ever since I heard about its opening. I like udon - big, fat and so slurp-able. I was ready to enjoy myself.

Our side order of Kakuni (£6.20) was the first to arrive. Whilst I'm not a big fan of roasted pork belly, I love it braised. It reminds me of all those lovely fatty Chinese belly stews I grew up on. Taste wise this braised pork belly in cider tasted fine, homely. But totally lacking the expected excitement. The pork could also have done with a touch longer in the pot for it to reach that absolutely melting tender point.

The next to arrive was another side - Yasai Ten Mori (£7.70). The assortment of vegetables were delicately battered and deep fried, this was a plate of loveliness. It came with it's own little dish of condiments to add to the dipping sauce - grated mooli/daikon, sesame seeds and chopped spring onion. So pretty.

My steaming bowl Tempura Udon (£9.30) arrived with a humongous battered prawn perched on top. For a second a negative, "I hope that isn't all batter!" streamed through my brain. Oh how wrong I was. It was indeed all prawn with a good crunchy exterior. A touch too greasy but forgivable. The broth was clean. Probably to balance the greasiness of the tempura but I would have liked a little more 'ummph' to the soup. My sister, C, took quite a liking to it and happily swapped with me halfway through.

C's choice of Kinoko Hiya-Atsu (£10.80) of cold udon with hot mushroom broth with a side of walnut miso was, to my taste, a little odd. I absolutely adored the mushroom broth - all it's lovely umami goodness, by itself. I though the walnut miso odd and not at all enjoyable but C disagreed, happily slurping it down. Another oddity for me about this dish was the notion of the cold udon/hot broth. Dipping one into the other just made for a lukewarm dish. It's really not for me. But I would happily order that broth again.

The star of the meal had to be my nephew's Niku (£9.30), hot udon in hot broth with beef. It took ages to arrive, well after the other 2 mains and the hungry boy was definitely not impressed by the wait. But for this dish I would happily return to Koya .. and perhaps wait half an hour in the cold. The broth was all beefy goodness with the deliciousness of a generous hand of ginger. It was warming and hearty. And would probably have done well with an extra order of poached egg.

Despite my declaration of love for the udon noodle, I'm not sure if I'm a big fan of fresh udon. It was chewy and for my first mouthfuls very enjoyable. It wasn't until C pointed out that it was a little too doughy, too heavy that I realised she was right. I think it's still going to be the packet stuff for me. But for a bowl of Niku all to myself, I'll definitely be going back to Koya.

Koya
49 Frith Street, London W1D 4SG

Japanese Goodness - Nizuni, Fitzrovia

We went for Japanese the other week and it was delicious. Even yummier with the 30% off the food bill from Toptable. It's not often that we have a good Japanese meal other than a quick bowl of noodles and we have a lot of that and it's boring! So with the pending meal at Nizuni, I laid down a few ground rules:

• No noodles (a no-no when there are so many other yummy things that we can order)
• No rice (same rule as noodles but sushi is OK because sushi is sushi)

Agedashi Tofu - my order because I love it. But before I could even say "Boo!" SM had gulped two thirds of this down. Believe me I was horrified! First, I thought we were sharing this meal and secondly - keep off my special dish!! It turns out SM thought this was miso soup (SM's special order). It left me slightly speechless. Seriously, how does someone who had lived in Vancouver for a year and pratically lived on sushi and Japanese food get agedashi tofu and miso soup mixed up? Totally not impressed. The dish was nice though. Light crisp batter, yummy salty tentsuyu broth. My only little niggly complain would be the use of firm tofu. I missed the silken smoothness I would usually expect.

Beef Tataki with pear gherkins, capers and ponzu sauce - as it came so well recommended. It looked really weeny when it arrived. OK, let's go instead with 'delicate'. It sounds much nicer. The serving may have been small but it was delicious. The beef was utterly tender, the capers and gherkins lent a lovely tang. Two thumbs up.

Tempura Moriawase - because anything deep fried is always welcomed at our table. Light as air batter, crisp and none of that heavy greasiness. The vegetables retained their veggie integrity and the prawns had that lovely fresh crunch.

Nasadengaku. Aubergine, good. Miso, delicious. Aubergine with miso, vegetable bliss. SM and I are very fond of aubergine and the nasadengaku was spot on. Not too oily, not too salty, not too sweet. Just a complete balance of flavours.

I was a little surprised when SM agreed to a order of Sashimi Mori Ni - the chef's selection of 14 pieces of sashimi. Normally the closest SM would get to a piece of raw fish would on top a blob of sushi rice. Surprised as I was, I wasn't about to disagree. The serving was generous and the fish very fresh. I'm a happy bunny but there is a little matter that confuses me. No matter how many times I look back on my photos of this dish, I can't make out how the serving is 14 pieces. I'm pretty darn sure it's 15! The scallop that the chef cut into 3 pieces instead of 2 :) I gain 1 extra bit ... apparently.

The salmon skin make rolls with spicy mayonnaise (sakekawa) were a bit of a hit and miss. A hit with with SM but a miss for me. The skin was chewy and really too much of a bother to enjoy.

The Dragon Roll, on the other hand, with its fresh crab meat, cucumber and avocado topped with eel was supremely good. The roll on its own would have been nice but it was the eel that made it.
Sweet, rich with a slight char from the grill. So, so good.

Our food came out in 2 lots with the maki rolls and the sashimi coming out slightly later than the rest. Not that it really mattered since the first few dishes came out really quickly but I was stuffed even before half our meal made it to us. I know SM was gleefully hoping I would concede defeat but seriously, that was never going to happen. Me? Concede food defeat? Never!

Overall it was lovely evening. Food was good and the staff were friendly but slightly slow at times. The downsides would be the table arrangements - with all their space, they could surely leave a little space between tables? I heard every bit of conversation both our neighbours were having. It gets more than a bit uncomfortable after awhile. Also, they might want to rethink their flooring. We heard and felt every thudding step every member of staff and every customer took past our table.

Other than that, it was all good. Really :) It does get a get a little better thoug. The bill came to a total of just over £70 for the two of us without drinks and with the 30% discount we paid about just over £50. Rather good I should say. Don't you?

Nizuni
22 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 2NB

The Re-emergence of the Work Desk Lunch

Lunch at work has been eaten increasingly at my desk recently. Not that I mind much most of the time but sometimes it's nice to have a break to recharge the old batteries. On this occassion it was cheap sushi - an eel roll and three inari pouches topped with cooked grated carrot.

Sushi, Sushi, Sushi at Kampachi

Actually, we had a whole load more than sushi at Kampachi that evening after our disastrous lunch at Delicious. One of the more established names, Kampachi has been serving great Japanese food since I was a kid. Alright, so Bangi is a wee bit far out .... but it's not so far for any Malaysian in search of food :D - I have noticed that Malaysians in general would happily drive for hours for a good meal. Yes, there are a few Kampachis in KL BUT they don't serve a buffet dinner every night.

I hadn't had any Japanese food in quite a long time at that point and I was like a child in a candy store. I wanted everything and wasn't quite sure where to start. Razan it seems, in the few years since I last saw her, has turned into the sushi queen - she ate over 30 pieces all by herself. Her claim, I didn't keep count :) But seriously, even if she did eat half that number ...where could she possibly put it all?

First up - it just had to be sushi, didn't it? A plate of assorted sushi and sashimi. Remember this is a buffet and it is in the middle of Bangi - probably "in the middle of where???" for most people, so I wasn't expecting top grade stuff. It was still great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I like most things with grilled unagi (eel) on it and the kappamaki (cucumber roll) topped with grilled unagi and mayonnaise was lovely.

Salmon sashimi is always good ... I made sure I had my fill to last me through long months of sushi/sashimi deprivation in London.

Ohhhh the lovely, lovely kaki fried. Gorgeously juicy oysters covered in a panko crumbs and deep fried. I'm a real sucker for these especially when they're covered in bulldog sauce. As they were being cooked to order at one of the counters, there weren't many that lay around for too long. But the chef must have been slightly off that evening ... some batches were perfectly cooked and some were overcooked and a little dry.

Delicious bowls of Oden, a Japanese winter hotpot of sorts. Filled with lots of yummy things - fishcakes in various forms and daikon to name a few in a lovely broth. The best thing was probably the daikon - sweet whilst picking up the subtle flavouring from the dashi.

I had a load more things but it to a point where I was too busy eating to notice that I hadn't taken any photos :) I have to admit that we went back twice - the first time my mother was feeling a little too poorly to attend her own birthday dinner. Definitely no complains on my part :)

Kampachi
Equatorial Hotel Bangi-Putrajaya, Off Persiaran Bandar, 43650 Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor

Kyoto Restaurant

Although we had plans to go to Eat Tokyo for dinner (our second attempt), we got sidetracked and ended up next door at Kyoto Restaurant instead. I was in the mood for sushi and I had read good reviews for this place. Our welcome was friendly and as we had come bang in the middle of dinner time on a Friday evening we were given the table right next to the door, where we had to side to side. Not the most comfortable seats in the house but it gave us a great view of the sushi chefs at work.

I was torn between sushi and noodles. I had planned on sushi but the greedy monster inside me demanded noodles. One of each surely be over the top? I settled for the Kaki Fry (deep fried oysters at £6.50) from the appetiser section and the dragon roll. I love deep fried oysters and when I have Japanese with my mother at home, we usually have an order of this. However, I was really quite disappointed when it arrived. Each oyster had been cut in half! It made the dish look bigger but it meant that every delicious bit of oyster succulence was gone - deep fried out. Like most deep fried foods, one always looks for a crisp exterior and a juicy centre. Not for these oysters here. Other than that the dish wasn't too bad. There was a reasonable number of oysters. Fried, perhaps, a little too crisp. There was also little bits of potato crisps served with the oysters with a little dish of donkatsu sauce.

As we were being seated I saw an order of the Dragon Roll (£7) being sent out and knew that I had to order it. I think it was the eel sitting on top of the roll that did it for me. The roll was a basic Californian roll (crab stick, cucumber and avocado) but that the eel and the sauce really did make it more delicious. I'm not quite sure what the sauce was, the menu stated it was iso sauce, whatever that is. Slightly sweet, it really complemented the eel.

Stuart stuck to his standard order of Californian Roll (£4.80), which were slightly smaller than mine but with the same filling with an extra bit of tobiko rolled into the rice.

As his main, Stuart had another favourite - Chicken Yakisoba (£6.50). We were both slightly surprised when it arrived. The noodles looked like the stuff out of an instant noodle packet with its slight curve in the noodle structure. Whilst we assumed that the usual buckwheat flour noodles would be used, the restaurant used the term 'soba' a bit more generally to mean thin noodles. Although it tasted alright, there was a bit too much thick cut onion and beansprouts was barely cooked with a very evident raw flavour. Stuart, who is usually so easy to impress, was barely satisfied on this occasion.

Verdict?
The sushi here is definitely very good and the prices rather reasonable. However, after having lived in Vancouver, where sushi and yakisoba is plentiful, cheap and reasonably good, Stuart has found it a little hard to adjust to what can be found in London. If we ever make it back here, we'll be sticking to the sushi and leaving the food from the kitchen well alone. What also irked me slightly was that although there seemed an adequate number of waiting staff, service was slow. No one brought us menus until I asked for them and from our vantage point in front of the sushi bar, we also noticed how slow the completed dishes was being picked up by the waiting staff and sent to the tables. No doubt service is friendly, but the pace should really pick up.

Kyoto Restaurant
26 Romilly Street, London W1D 5AL

Tokyo Diner

True to our odd eating hours on a Sunday, Stuart and I decided to try out Eat Tokyo on Romilly Street in Soho. The food was pretty tasty and the prices reasonable when I went with a friend a few months ago. Lo and behold .... Eat Tokyo was closed when we got there about 5PM. Perhaps we should have tried Kyoto Restaurant right next door (my google searches have brought back some pretty good reviews for its sushi)? We headed to Tokyo Diner in Chinatown instead. Sitting on the corner of Newport Place and Lisle Street, the restaurant has been around since the early 1990s. I've passed it numerous times but I've never been in. It's a compact restaurant with policies of no serving of tuna and no tipping. Certainly not a problem for us.

Stuart ordered the Chicken Katsu Curry (£10), which came with a whole panko crumbed chicken breast sitting on a pile of rice with a side of Japanese vegetable (potato and carrots) curry sauce and little side of salad greens. The chicken was nicely crumbed and very crispy. The curry was the standard Japanese sort that could have come from a packet. It was still good though :) The potatoes and carrots were nice and soft. Not mushy, just soft but still holding it's shape.

I had the Chicken Katsu with sauce (£9.70) served in a large bowl with rice and salad. The sauce turned out to be a drizzle of donkatsu bulldog sauce over my chicken. I say bulldog sauce but it could really have been any brand. My chicken katsu was exactly the same as Stuart's - a big piece of chicken breast. It was nice that it actually tasted like chicken and not some mushy bit of non-discript piece of meat. I did find the overall dish slightly dry (not even the extra drizzle from donkatsu sauce bottle provided helped), so maybe the extra 30p for some curry sauce would have been worth it. We also had a bowl of miso soup each (£0.80 per bowl) - which in true Chinese home style I poured over some of my rice ...haha....

Verdict?
The food is nothing fancy but solid and satisfying at reasonable prices. It makes a nice change from the Chinese food I would have when I'm in the area. However, a plate of rice piled high with roast meats from a Chinese would still be cheaper :) However, a large portion of rice is free on request.

Tokyo Diner
2 Newport Place, London WC2H 7JP

Onigiri Introduced

I have fallen well and truly under the spell of the onigiri rice-ball. Although I've heard of it for years as Japan's favourite snack food, I don't think I had ever seen it until a few years ago. And even then I poo-pooed it....Rice in seaweed....just like those horrid hand-rolls! I like sushi and like sashimi even more but hand-rolls I do not understand. Perhaps it stems from the soggy, over-generous seaweed in rolls I've had when I was younger at Japanese restaurants as till this day tend to stay well away from them.


Curiosity did get the better of me last year when I bought my first rice-ball. And I have never looked back. The clever plastic pakaging ever conveniently separates the rice from the seaweed but beware...you have to be prepared to wolf the rice-ball down once rice meets seaweed. No problem... it should be gone in about 5 bites :) I particularly like the salmon onigiri from Wasabi (chains all around London with a large variety of single/double packed sushi, sushi plates and hot food - tofu jahang and spicy chicken with rice is particularly good for a cheap-ish filling meal), which comes in handy for breakfast when I cannot bear another mouthful of muesli for breakfast :)