Picture of Itadaki Zen, WC1X 9BJ

Historical version 6 of Itadaki Zen, WC1X 9BJ (view current version)

  • 020 7278 3573
  • 139 King's Cross Road, WC1X 9BJ (streetmap) (osm) (gmap) (bingmap) (streetview)
  • noon-3pm, 6pm-10pm Mon-Tue; 6pm-10pm Wed; noon-3pm, 6pm-10pm Thu; noon-3pm, 6pm-10:30pm Fri; 6pm-10:30pm Sat; closed Sun

Vegan Japanese restaurant in King's Cross, opened in connection with the Japanese Academy of Agricultural Philosophy.

The ground floor features light wood and serene decor, with three small two-person tables and eleven more seats at the wide bar along one wall. According to an apparently now-deleted post on the PPK forums there's more seating downstairs, at a large communal table.

Kake and doop visited on a Thursday evening in March 2010. We'd booked, but probably hadn't needed to, since there was space both at the bar and the tables throughout our visit. Background music was playing quietly — including an Enya CD that came round twice.

Miso soup (£2) had a rather thin and slightly sour flavour. Nigiri sushi (£8.50 for the eight-piece set) photo made use of some interesting and unusual toppings such as sliced okra, peeled red pepper, sliced beetroot, and a perfectly-prepared shiitake mushroom. For some reason, though, the rice was flavoured with salt only, rather than the seasoned vinegar which is more usual; we didn't think this worked particularly well.

Tempura (£7.80) photo showed a deft hand with the frying; it was light and not greasy at all. The vegetables within the batter — okra, baby sweetcorn, onion rings, sweet potato, and shredded carrot-and-onion — were cooked to a nice bite without being undercooked, though sadly one of the onion rings contained a tough piece of onion skin.

Ingen no goma-ae (green beans in sesame dressing; £3.40) photo was pleasing enough, though a touch more sesame flavour would have been welcome. Cubes of agedashi tofu (£5) photo were over-large, and maybe a little underseasoned; we could also have done without the hair we found in this dish (not from either of us), as well as the overcooked peas perched on top. Okara (a nutritious by-product of soya milk manufacture; £2.80) photo featured more overcooked peas, but was otherwise fine.

Chef's special pudding (£4) turned out to be a strawberry-based agar dessert with sweet aduki bean paste photo; this was quite tasty, if surprisingly unseasonal given the restaurant's emphasis on sustainability.

Sake (£29/bottle) was Clearspring brand, with the Vegan Society's logo on the label to reassure those of said dietary persuasion. Service was very polite and anxious-to-please. A 10% service charge was added to the bill.

Kake's verdict: Not sure. I really didn't like what they'd done to the sushi rice, and the miso soup wasn't to my taste either. Nothing stood out as a "must eat again", though this is perhaps partly because the best-executed dish was the tempura, and I can take or leave tempura in general. The fact that everything is vegan is useful, though, and the prices are reasonable, so I might give it another chance if I needed a quick bite to eat on my own in the area or if one of my vegan friends fancied Japanese food.

Accessibility: A step up to get in. Toilets are down a flight of stairs with a bend in the middle and no handrail for most of the way.

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Last visited by Kake and doop, 11 March 2010. Opening hours taken from the Itadaki Zen website, April 2011.
OS X co-ord: 530777 OS Y co-ord: 182883 (Latitude: 51.529212 Longitude: -0.114488)
This is version 6 (as of 2011-04-04 23:38:00). View current version. List all versions.