Asakusa

22/3/2016

• 1 check-in

This place is awesome. Walked in and felt like I was in another country, Japan. The layout, presentation, staff and most of the customers here are Japanese. Talk about authentic, this place is a gem.

Just got out of a concert and needed food badly, found out this place opens late. Walked in at 10.40pm and they still took orders.

Has a wide selection of sushi, sashimi and set meals. Meal sizes are just nice and the prices are decent. High quality meat, tastes lovely  Lovely staff, quick service and lovely ambience.

It's a nice place to chill, and have drinks. Enough seats for couples, groups and families. I wouldn't say it's kids friendly cause it feels like a place where adults come in to let go some steam after a long day (maybe it's because I'm here at almost 11pm). Also no space to park a stroller.

I'm going to come back here to chill DF out lol

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  I asked for medium rare, I got medium rare. That's what I'm talking about.

  I asked for medium rare, I got medium rare. That's what I'm talking about.
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  Sashimi Set £15

  Sashimi Set £15
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  Beef Shogayaki Set, comes with rice and miso soup £8

  Beef Shogayaki Set, comes with rice and miso soup £8
• See all photos from Alicia Y. for Asakusa

9/6/2016

• 1 check-in

SO you like Japanese food and want to have a taste of what a good isakaya is without travelling 13 hours to go to Japan???? Then you on the spot  .... Asakusa is the place to be.

The menus are both in English and Japanese and the staff are able to speak both languages. The felling i can tell is that you are actually in Japan.

Now on the subject that matters ... Food....... Simply said aweeeeeeesome. There is a variety of small dishes you can choose most of them very typical for a Isakaya restaurant along with the normal selection of Sushi. But if you want to follow my advice skip the sushi and eat all the rest.

Additionally you can quince your thirst with real Japanese sake and beer. Skip the wine section as its not so great ( you are after all in a Japanese restaurant and Japan one thing they are not known for is wine)

The only reasonthat i am giving them 4 starts instead of 5 (and believe i had to really contemplate on that) is the booking procedure they have. Although you might be lucky to find something if just walk in when you try to book on the phone they seem to be a bit rude whether you do it in Japanese or English. So i will keep visiting and hope they will fix that ... that 5 star review is just around the corner

1/3/2016

If you're thinking of trying this restaurant. Just NO. Terrible service. Food is relatively fine but definitely not worth the hassle you have to put up with to get it. We were surrounded by incredibly rowdy customers who were shouting and screaming in a basement of a dirty and outdated restaurant with terrible decor. The toilet was filthy and there was only one for a man and a woman. So be prepared to queue.

When we went to order after spending half an hour trying to get the attention of our waitress she informed us that the sushi would take an hour so being a little crushed as that's why we came here we chose other foods. It took an hour and a half for the food we did order. So basically we should have gotten the sushi as it would have been faster. What we got was a small portion of what could be described as chicken I guess and a small portion of pork. Took another hour almost to get one portion of ice cream and a bill. Never again.

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  Some dumplings we got. Definitely not worth the wait.

  Some dumplings we got. Definitely not worth the wait.

16/11/2015

• 1 check-in

I got the hamburg steak with salad appetizer, and then the sashimi set, which came with a bowl of rice and a miso soup.

Both tasted good. The hamburg steak was a bit on the dry side, and I've had better sake sashimi at Eat Tokyo for a lower price.

What was unbearable was the service. It took a solid 30 minutes for me to see any food at all. The person sitting next to me at the bar was quoted 50 minutes, and he sat there with no food until I was done eating.

Then, to top it off, they took forever to give me the bill. I had to flag down three different waitresses before I could pay them. Then a week later, I realize that they charged me twice on my card. I'm going to drop by tomorrow or something to get it refunded - but how annoying!

I was really excited to find a very highly rated sushi place a 5 minute walk from my place, but it was a disappointment.

27/9/2015

• 1 check-in

I got a recommendation to come here from a couple of people. I called and they didn't have any reservations, but I chanced it and decided to come see if they'd seat us. I came around 6:30 on a Friday night and they seated us at the counter immediately.

The whole place was just lovely. I ordered tofu with bean sprouts, fried miso eggplant, shiitake mushroom sushi, and miso soup. Matt b went for chicken katsu. Everything was perfect. My fave dish was the miso eggplant.

The staff was super nice and even refilled my water. I'll definitely be coming back as much as I can. The total price was reasonable, too. 27 pounds for dinner and drinks.

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  Husband with decor

  Husband with decor
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  All the sushi

  All the sushi
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  Sushi chef

  Sushi chef

4/6/2016

You must make a reservation. While the service was nice, the food took forever to come out. Make sure you order everything at once, otherwise you will be there over one and a half hours. The food was delicious, particularly the pork belly, eggplant, and the sashimi, but did not fill us up at all. We were still hungry at the end of the meal, and that's with us purchasing 6-7 small dishes costing around 70 pounds.

Bottom line: While it was a nice dinner, we don't see ourselves really going again.

25/10/2015

• 3 check-ins

Julia D and I were lucky to get a couple of seats when we rocked up on 6:30 on a Friday night, I would recommend booking ahead when coming on Friday or Saturday as other attempts to come here haven't been too successful. Asakusa is a very popular spot!

I ordered chicken katsu and miso soup. Julia D went for a range of different sushi which she was very please with. The staff were super helpful and kept filling up our water which is rare for London. The whole bill came to around £25 which was very reasonable considering the amount of food we had.

12/5/2015

Asakusa. It's been on my main list of places to visit for some time. I took a friend who was over from LA. Now, if you've been to LA you know that they get very good Asian food. Korea, Thai, Vietnamese and of course Japanese (esp raw fish). I took her there knowing that Asakusa was highly rated by locals. I was lucky enough to get a last minute booking very early in the evening. 6pm when it opened to be precise. It looks very lacklustre from outside. Bit old hat you might say. And inside it's no different really. But, and eventhough I have an eye for decor and design, when it comes to eating out, it's all about the food for me. Anything else is a bonus.

I ordered for us, being the OCD person that I am, scanning reviews the night before and knowing what to get. The baked aubergine is sweet and large. Good to share. And best to have with a starch or protein as on it's own it would be too sickly. I had to get prawn tempura. Which was very fresh and light. A winner for me. The Karaage chicken was good, but not the best I've had in London. It was not oily at all. But that's where I was kinda disappointed as it almost looked too healthy. No glistening. It was a big portion of 4 pieces on the bone. But I do prefer my karaage (like Korean Fried Chicken) boneless.

Onto the fish...the black cod is something I read to be a certainty to order and I really liked it. Sweet undertones on the the cod it was good. The horse mackerel was not in, but the server kindly explained there is not much difference! So mackerel nigiri it was. I love mackerel. One of my fav fishes and this was good. The spicy tuna rolls were more coarse than some you might find but this did not detract from the dish. Very good maki rolls.

So all in all it was good. Not great but good. But this was my first visit and I'll be back for another try for sure. And the service was lovely and attentive. They even got me Japanese Mayo for my Karaage chicken when I asked for some. So good work. A solid 7/10.

22/1/2015

• 1 check-in

We went here on our last night in London. The sushi was very fresh and the service was good. We were seated pretty quickly and I was surprised at how soon our food was served. The owners kept checking in on us very often.

The place is super small so I can see it getting crowded from time to time. I spent a significant amount of my childhood in Tokyo and while this place does not feel like Japanese sushi joints, it does serve just as much fresh fish!

We ordered the gyoza which was delicious. We ordered three roles between the three of two of us but I cannot for the life of me remember which ones they were. I wish we had ordered some noodles or soup because the folks next to us did and it looked AMAZING! I absolutely was drooling over their meal while waiting for mine.

Compared to the rest of the places in London, this was not a bad deal. I believe we spent about 40 pounds on the whole meal, which was not bad for such a popular spot. Overall, would totally recommend this place if you are craving some
Asian food in the midst of all the shepherd pies, donuts and steaks!

25/11/2014

• 1 check-in

Terrible service and terrible hot food. The only good thing we ordered here was a tuna avocado roll. The salmon sake sashimi was mediocre, but maybe the nigiri might have been better.

Pork belly: ridiculously tough to eat and so salty. Terrible.

Chicken meatball skewer: way too salty. I don't understand why they need to put so much salt on everything.

Asakusa udon: just ok. Their definition of vegetables on the menu is seaweed only. The mochi was weird and eel did not taste so great. Only good thing were the soft chewy noodles.

Salmon sake sashimi: ok. Tough to eat and I've definitely had better.

Tuna avocado roll: this was the best thing ordered and was actually really good.

Expensive and a huge disappointment. The male server has a terrible attitude problem. I'd highly recommend going elsewhere.

10/12/2014

• 1 check-in

I had really high expectations for this place since a few friends recommended it and overall it was a good place to try but not sure if I would go back.

We went on a Sat and it was packed so good thing we made a reservation. Surprisingly we started with udon noodles and chicken teriyaki, which is so weird because usually you end with that. Then the sushi and sashimi came after a very long wait and by that time we weren't so hungry after the hot food! :( The sushi was mediocre, the sashimi was a lot better but their was something wrong with the tuna as it was a bit stringy. I got the sesame ice cream to end.

The staff were really friendly but you have to wait a while for the food. Not the best date place I have to say but happy I tried it.

9/3/2014

Food: Everything we ordered was really good. I would highly recommend the pork belly, fried aubergine with soya paste, and quail eggs. The sushi was also very fresh!

Service: Not good. Our waitress was super friendly but the food took a long time and we had to ask for water and the bill multiple times.

Ambiance: Quaint. It's small and charming. The vibe is pretty authentic.

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  Pork belly

  Pork belly

5/11/2014

• 1 check-in

• Listed in Japan Fan in London

Asakusa is a tiny, hole in the wall that serves authentic Japanese food and is great value for money. I loved the salmon sashimi, as I always do, and I love the bustling and elbow to elbow little Japanese world in here. I tried nasu dengaku for the first time, and it was really nice! The genmaicha was also great and the maki rolls I had here were good. Asakusa is a place I will definitely come back to!

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  Salmon sashimi

  Salmon sashimi
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  Nasu dengaku

  Nasu dengaku

29/12/2015

Best Japanese in London. Unless you are lucky, you may have to reserve few days in advance (even weeks).

It is properly Japanese, you might need some help to read the menu :) but the quality is really high. You can also guess it by the amount of Japanese people dining at the place.

20/11/2013

Will only be visiting here for sushi. Been on a search for good local spot sushi place in central London for a while and experienced so many places that has warm poor quality tasting sushi that just had to do the job of curbing that sushi craving. Japanese owned and staff are nice. Btw, beware of the 40 minute wait to get your sushi order.

Must make a reservation!

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  Red bean mochi dessert

  Red bean mochi dessert
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  Tuna with soy bean sauce

  Tuna with soy bean sauce
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  Steak

  Steak
• See all photos from Grace K. for Asakusa

16/12/2015

Typical izakaya with nice udon and sushi. The salmon sushi looks crystal and extremely fresh.

9/1/2015

• 1 check-in

This is a mixed review as the restaurant has a cool genuine izakaya feel to it and the food is quite good and reasonably priced, but the problem is the service is SO SLOW. I mean, you could literally die of hunger in this place.  The main issue is there is only one sushi chef in a tiny bar to make all of the cold dishes. Combine that with the fact he is probably the slowest sushi chef I have ever witnessed means like me you will probably still feel hungry after being in the restaurant for 2 hours!!!!!! Too bad given that the dishes that do come out are good!

If you're there as a group and don't mind drinking between snacks then it's a winner but don't go unless you have a 2-3 hours to kill.

16/10/2014

• 1 check-in

You know what really frustrates me? When a restaurant with really tasty food has really horrible service. Why can't people get things right?

There were five of us here, and we had a reservation, but we were seated downstairs. I mean it's nice that they have a downstairs room, but it smells awful getting to it (because of the toilets). I can't help but wonder if the terrible service had to do with us being seated downstairs, but whatever.

We ordered a lot of food. And all of it was good. Sashimi? Delicious. Sushi? Tasty. Skewers of various types of chicken offal? Really amazing. Tonkatsu? Awesome. Tempura? Great. It just took forever. It's like the kitchen staff don't know how to organize themselves to cook things in a timely manner. Weird. You know what else took ages? Getting our saki. The first batch of saki we ordered? Took FOREVER to arrive. You know what else took ages? Getting a server's attention so we could order more saki. You know what took even longer? Getting the servers to refill our water when we repeatedly asked them to do it. We also tried to order a bit more sushi at the end. Like I've done at every other sushi restaurant I've ever been to anywhere ever. And it was going to take 30 minutes. Not cool guys, not cool.

I guess when they know people will keep going to a restaurant because the food is good, they can be horrible servers. However, I think that a place with good food isn't worth going to if you have to deal with service like that. So I won't be returning even though the food was some of the best Japanese I've had in London.

29/12/2013

• 1 check-in

Definitely one of the best sushi places in London.
**Note: Also great for hot Japanese food -- useful to eat at with friends who don't like sushi .
Have been eating here for the past 5 -  6 years and went back last week (for the first time in a year) and was not disappointed. Don't let the shabby exterior fool you, this place is the real thing.

So what if you can't read the food offerings in Japanese on the walls, there is plenty on this very varied menu to choose from.
So what if the sushi takes ages to arrive and the food your table has ordered comes out at all different times....it makes it feel more like a family run place. Sit back and enjoy. They have an excellent sake selection as well.

Tips:
1. Make a reservation. It gets crowded quite quickly, even on what you might think would be a 'quiet night'.
2. Order sushi early...if you are eating/order after 18.30 you will have to wait 30 minutes or more for your sushi.  If you are pressed for time get one of the hot dishes. My favorite is the salmon with soy glaze --  the portion is huge.

Now pick up a big ol' piece of pickled ginger and dig in.

21/2/2014 Updated review

What happened to the Miso Soup?  It used to be wonderful but for the last two visits, they tasted odd - maybe too much Iriko?  I hope they go back to the previous recipe and use Katsuo stock instead.

Other than that everything else was as good as before.