I am pretty much incapable of resisting a Japanese restaurant – and lucky me there’s no shortage of those in London. Given this, you can imagine my excitement when I saw the London Restaurant Festival’s Japanese Journey. A self-guided food tour of six of London’s best ramen bars, izakayas and sushi restaurants in ONE DAY?! Sign me up!
I rounded up five hungry foodie pals and we started our tour at Sticks N Sushi in Covent Garden. I’d visited here once already and lamented my inability to order everything on the menu – this time around my choices were limited to a platter of sticks or sushi which helped a little! Also helpful are friends who love to share, so I confidently ordered the sushi. The deal was that for the price of our ticket, we had a tasting-size meal at each restaurant, together with a Suntory whisky. Bear in mind this was over six hours, but still it promised to be a day of stomach-stretching!
Chefs hard at work on our sushi
I was ridiculously spoilt for good Japanese in my home of Auckland, New Zealand – and sadly I didn’t realise it! Fresh-rolled sushi, deliciously flavoured donburi, delicate nigiri… it was all freely available. I’m sorry, but the sushi chains of London just don’t quite match-up. Fortunately, there’s plenty of independent places to fill my Japanese cravings, and Sticks ‘n’ Sushi certainly delivered. It fuses Danish and Japanese cuisine and is one of the most successful restaurant groups in Denmark… we’re fortunate to have its incredible flavour combinations here in London too. Yum!
Onwards to our next stop, Shoryu Soho for what was one of the toughest choices of the day… their signature Kotteri Tonkotsu ramen, or a Wagyu Beef Hirata Bun. I’ll be honest, I still don’t know how I made this decision… I practically had to flip a coin. The Tonkotsu ramen was magnificent, so fortunately I had no major food envy… but check out that pillowy bun and succulent beef!
I went for the green tea option on this round
After taking our time in Shoryu (we were trying to stick to a timeframe of an hour per restaurant!) we wandered over to Tonkotsu. Despite their ramen fame, they opted to spotlight their fresh gyoza dumplings for the London Restaurant Festival – not a bad decision! Filled with either pork, prawn or shiitake mushrooms, they were gone in the blink of an eye.
Fortunately our next stop was a little further away, giving us time to digest. Kurobuta Marble Arch might be a little bit off the beaten path but oh my is it worth making the trip for. This was my favourite stop of the day, where we got to sample everything from smoked duck tatami to salmon nigiri on their tasting platter. I even got my hirata bun fix, via their BBQ pork belly buns.
Kurobuta had also created a whisky cocktail with elderflower, apple and mint, which I found tasty and quite palatable!
Thoroughly satisfied and buzzing off the incredible flavours, we headed back into central London for what would prove to be our final stop of the day, Chisou Japanese Restaurant Mayfair. While this was the smallest meal, portion-wise, we certainly didn’t need anything more by this point, and the rare beef tatami still disappeared in short order.
We’d been pre warned at Tonkotsu that Kanada-Ya, our final stop, were struggling to cope with their popularity and so it proved… when we turned up close to 6pm, there was a 45 minute wait. While this isn’t unusual in London, when we’d been eating all day we neither wanted nor needed it, and took our happy bellies home instead!
Keep an eye out for the London Restaurant Festival 2015 – this year there was a variety of food tours, supper clubs, cooking demonstrations and special menus, so I can’t wait to see what happens next year! In the meantime, I’ll be heading back to all of these to try more Japanese deliciousness.
Do you have a favourite Japanese restaurant to recommend in your town?
