Randomness Guide to London Menu

Japanese restaurant in Hampstead, specialising in kushiyaki (grilled things on skewers).

It's quite small, seating a couple of dozen people on the ground floor and another 16 in the basement, and it's very popular so it's a good idea to book. The ground floor is more popular, and features ten or so seats at a counter in front of the grill where all the kushiyaki is cooked. Although they also do sushi, this is prepared at a sushi station at the back of the basement dining room and there are no sushi counter seats.

Kake, Ewan, Sarah, and claud visited on a Thursday evening in September 2009. We hadn't booked, and when we arrived around 7:45pm we were immediately consigned to the basement — it's likely that all the upstairs tables had been booked, since the place was packed on both floors by the time we left.

The menu is extensive, and includes small plates, soups, sushi, sashimi, fried dishes, simmered dishes, and noodle dishes, as well as the kushiyaki they specialise in. We ordered a selection of things from different menu sections. It all arrived as and when it was ready, which worked fine given that we'd ordered a succession of small dishes which would never have all fitted onto the table at once. Speed of arrival was fine too, except for the couple of extras we ordered towards the end of the evening when the place was full and the chefs were presumably working flat-out.

As expected, the kushiyaki was well-executed; we tried their "set B", which included more unusual items such as quail eggs and chicken gizzard photo, and also a couple of their vegetarian offerings, asparagus and shiitake mushrooms photo.

Other dishes were also good, though; in fact, everything we tried was good, and some things were outstanding. Nasu dengaku photo was meltingly tender, and the miso topping was well-balanced rather than overwhelmingly sweet as it is in many other places. Ewan was very keen on the agedashi todu photo. Chutoro photo and yellowtail photo sashimi were both very fresh-tasting, and the wasabi they came with was the real thing, not the horseradish-dyed-green stuff that usually turns up. Tempura vegetables photo were crisply fried, and not overly greasy. There was nothing wrong with any of the several other dishes we tried, either.

Our final bill was £40/head, but over a quarter of this was due to sake, of which we had a 720ml bottle plus two individual servings — the latter came in wooden boxes with a tiny pile of salt on one corner photo.

Kake's verdict: I will very happily return.

Accessibility: A step up to get in. Half of the seating is down a flight of stairs, and both ground floor and basement are quite cramped. Toilets are on the ground floor; can't remember if there were steps.

See also:

• London Eating comments
• Londonelicious review
• Time Out review
• World Foodie Guide review