# Japanese restaurant near British museum



## rubbershoes (Oct 25, 2011)

Can anyone recommend a Japanese restaurant near the British Museum. It needs to be open at Saturday lunchtime and have tables. And not be too expensive.

Thanks


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## Santino (Oct 25, 2011)

Wagamama. It has tables, is not too expensive and is near the British Museum.


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## Big Gunz (Oct 25, 2011)

Santino said:


> Wagamama. It has tables, is not too expensive and is near the British Museum.



Pisstaker!


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## gaijingirl (Oct 25, 2011)

you might enjoy Abeno - it's an okonomiyaki restaurant - not your usual sushi/noodles joint, although they do have many of the old favourites on their menu too. I take students there when I take them to Japanese exhibitions at the museum or events at SOAS and they enjoy the novelty of it. It's decent quality and a bit different. There are plenty of high end restaurants around there too - but maybe a bit pricey for your requirements.

http://www.abeno.co.uk/


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## Big Gunz (Oct 25, 2011)

Taro isn't too bad, a brisk 10 min stroll away but cheap for a Japanese http://www.tarorestaurants.co.uk/


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## RoyReed (Oct 25, 2011)

Kikuchi, 14 Hanway Street, W1P 9DD - excellent!


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## rutabowa (Oct 25, 2011)

gaijingirl said:


> you might enjoy Abeno - it's an okonomiyaki restaurant - not your usual sushi/noodles joint, although they do have many of the old favourites on their menu too. I take students there when I take them to Japanese exhibitions at the museum or events at SOAS and they enjoy the novelty of it. It's decent quality and a bit different. There are plenty of high end restaurants around there too - but maybe a bit pricey for your requirements.
> 
> http://www.abeno.co.uk/


this place is nice! (if a tiny bit overpriced)


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## rubbershoes (Oct 25, 2011)

RoyReed said:


> Kikuchi, 14 Hanway Street, W1P 9DD - excellent!



Good reviews, but pricy. and not open at lunchtimes

looks good for Mrs Shoes and I when the children aren't with us


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## rubbershoes (Oct 25, 2011)

and I should have said, it needs to be somewhere suitable for children


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## rutabowa (Oct 25, 2011)

i would def say abeno then as it isn't very formal. although i have never actually taken a child there


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## gaijingirl (Oct 25, 2011)

with children it's fun... that's why I take students there (I don't know how old your children are obv).. but I'd take my little girl (a toddler) as equally as I take my students (11-16 years old)


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## rubbershoes (Oct 25, 2011)

the children are 3, 4 and 6.   they've had japanese food before so i'm not worried about them not liking it.

just don't want anywhere too hushed and formal


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## gaijingirl (Oct 25, 2011)

okonomiyaki is not hushed and formal - quite the opposite..


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## George & Bill (Oct 27, 2011)

I would tentatively speculate that Yoisho on Goodge Street - a friendly family-run 'izakaya' - is as authentic a Japanese restaurant as you'll find.


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 27, 2011)

Santino said:


> Wagamama. It has tables, is not too expensive and is near the British Museum.


You are kidding right? 
I once saw a review that said wagama was Japanese for noodles, that is about as accurate as saying it is a Japanese restaurant.


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 27, 2011)

gaijingirl said:


> okonomiyaki is not hushed and formal - quite the opposite..


Yeah,  I don't like abeno, its okonomiyaki but expensive and has none of the atmosphere of the real thing. For me its the wrong kind of food for a restaurant. 

There must surely be an opening for a real izakaya in London?


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## Santino (Oct 27, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> You are kidding right?
> I once saw a review that said wagama was Japanese for noodles, that is about as accurate as saying it is a Japanese restaurant.


Do you refuse to go to Pizza Express because it's insufficiently Italian?


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 28, 2011)

Santino said:


> Do you refuse to go to Pizza Express because it's insufficiently Italian?


Wagamama does not serve a single actual Japanese dish. 
It's a pan Asian mix at best.
I'm not being a snob, I go there somtimes and its great for kids.
It just isn't Japanese.


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 28, 2011)

I think I would only refer to pizza express as a pizza place .


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## rutabowa (Oct 28, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> Yeah, I don't like abeno, its okonomiyaki but expensive and has none of the atmosphere of the real thing. For me its the wrong kind of food for a restaurant.
> 
> There must surely be an opening for a real izakaya in London?


Is your advice "don't go anywhere" then!


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## Santino (Oct 28, 2011)

I think his advice is don't eat Japanese food outside of Japan.


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## George & Bill (Oct 28, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> Yeah,  I don't like abeno, its okonomiyaki but expensive and has none of the atmosphere of the real thing. For me its the wrong kind of food for a restaurant.
> 
> There must surely be an opening for a real izakaya in London?



If you bothered to read the other posts before spouting off (it's not exactly an epic thread) you'd see that I mentioned a 'real' izakaya, Yoisho in Goodge Street. There's also Don Zoko in Kingly Street, and given I only know about these two by chance, it's reasonable to suppose that others exist that you'd find if you did some research...


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 29, 2011)

slowjoe said:


> If you bothered to read the other posts before spouting off (it's not exactly an epic thread) you'd see that I mentioned a 'real' izakaya, Yoisho in Goodge Street. There's also Don Zoko in Kingly Street, and given I only know about these two by chance, it's reasonable to suppose that others exist that you'd find if you did some research...



Yeah I did see that, i've been to them and they are not really very much like a real izakaya. I'm not really dissing them, they are nice, but izakayas apart from being completely different, are pretty cheap eating in Japan, here if it's japanese it has to be poshy posh and expensive for some reason. I mean even at the current terrible rate of exchange at the moment, okonimiyaki would cost you a fiver tops, it's fancy dining at abeno.


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 29, 2011)

rutabowa said:


> Is your advice "don't go anywhere" then!


No, it's probably, don't go to Abeno. It's not what you would probably associate with Japanese food and not really worth the money.


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## George & Bill (Oct 29, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> Yeah I did see that, i've been to them and they are not really very much like a real izakaya. I'm not really dissing them, they are nice, but izakayas apart from being completely different, are pretty cheap eating in Japan, here if it's japanese it has to be poshy posh and expensive for some reason. I mean even at the current terrible rate of exchange at the moment, okonimiyaki would cost you a fiver tops, it's fancy dining at abeno.



Neither of those places are posh at all. They're reasonably expensive, but then, a pint of Guiness in a grubby English pub in Japan will cost you 900 yen - as a rule the only places that export their food at the low end of the price range are poor countries, whose citizens are hard up enough to be prepared to traipse half way round the world to earn a pittance. 

But for what it's worth, there are many more up-market izakayas in Japan, as there are up-market trattorias in Italiy, up-market pubs in England, etc etc. The two places I mentioned resemble such places pretty closely.


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 30, 2011)

slowjoe said:


> Neither of those places are posh at all. They're reasonably expensive, but then, a pint of Guiness in a grubby English pub in Japan will cost you 900 yen - as a rule the only places that export their food at the low end of the price range are poor countries, whose citizens are hard up enough to be prepared to traipse half way round the world to earn a pittance.
> 
> But for what it's worth, there are many more up-market izakayas in Japan, as there are up-market trattorias in Italiy, up-market pubs in England, etc etc. The two places I mentioned resemble such places pretty closely.



I didn't mean that those places were super posh, I said that in general Japanese food in Britain is considered posh eating. Yes I am all too aware of the price of a Guiness in Japan, but it has to come a long way, whereas rice and fish etc etc don't have to travel from Japan to the UK. Sure nihonshu is going to cost a shitload more here because nobody really makes it on mass in this country.

Yes there are lots of upmarket places all over the world, I said that I would like to see the izakaya style eating and drinking establishment (I guess the pub of the common man in Japan) in the UK. The ones in London are (understandably) more about the dining and have higher prices than you would ever expect in Tokyo.
I'm not here to argue, I just like izakayas. Maybe I just like cheap nihonshu and a sit down with some raw fish actually.


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## crustychick (Oct 30, 2011)

gaijingirl said:


> http://www.abeno.co.uk/



oooh, I like the look of that place. MUST try it out when I'm next in London


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## George & Bill (Oct 30, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> I didn't mean that those places were super posh, I said that in general Japanese food in Britain is considered posh eating. Yes I am all too aware of the price of a Guiness in Japan, but it has to come a long way, whereas rice and fish etc etc don't have to travel from Japan to the UK. Sure nihonshu is going to cost a shitload more here because nobody really makes it on mass in this country.
> 
> Yes there are lots of upmarket places all over the world, I said that I would like to see the izakaya style eating and drinking establishment (I guess the pub of the common man in Japan) in the UK. The ones in London are (understandably) more about the dining and have higher prices than you would ever expect in Tokyo.
> I'm not here to argue, I just like izakayas. Maybe I just like cheap nihonshu and a sit down with some raw fish actually.



The ingredients may not always need to travel far, but I would have thought that at least a large contingent of the staff would, if the experience were to be authentic. So while I quite agree that it would be great to have the sort of place you're talking about in London, I don't really see that it's the sort of business plan that's going to drag many Japanese 9000 miles, especially when a pound could soon be worth less than 120 yen.


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 30, 2011)

slowjoe said:


> The ingredients may not always need to travel far, but I would have thought that at least a large contingent of the staff would, if the experience were to be authentic. So while I quite agree that it would be great to have the sort of place you're talking about in London, I don't really see that it's the sort of business plan that's going to drag many Japanese 9000 miles, especially when a pound could soon be worth less than 120 yen.



An awful lot of japanese restaurants seem to staff koreans and chinese just because they sort of look the part (I've given up ever ordering in Japanese, probably a bit wanky anyway - that one in Goodge street seems to be staffed only by Japanese though). I don't really care who serves my food, plus there are loads of Japanese people who already live in London, I don't think anyone flys over here for the jobs (unless they are doing a stint in the London office). There is even a Japanese language school for kids round my way.

It doesn't seem all that long ago that the yen was 240 to the pound, blimey, I felt like crazy rich at the time. These days I am roughly comparing 100 yen to a quid, a bit pessimistic but it helps with the frugality.


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## George & Bill (Oct 30, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> An awful lot of japanese restaurants seem to staff koreans and chinese just because they sort of look the part (I've given up ever ordering in Japanese, probably a bit wanky anyway - that one in Goodge street seems to be staffed only by Japanese though). I don't really care who serves my food, plus there are loads of Japanese people who already live in London, I don't think anyone flys over here for the jobs (unless they are doing a stint in the London office). There is even a Japanese language school for kids round my way.



My experience, from having quite a lot of friends in London's Japanese community, is that most who are over here for any length of time are quite ambitious and wouldn't see setting up a cheap eatery as a very worthwhile project with which to fill time abroad - so while you could probably fill waiting jobs fairly easiliy with people from other parts of east Asia, I just don't see that there would be the impetus for a proprietor or a chef to be involved in such a project.

Obviously there are always exceptions, but as a rule the food that tends to be exported at a low price-point - in an authentic form - comes from countries whose citizens are poor and want or need to go abroad for work. Now, that means China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Iran, Portugal. In the early to mid 20th century lots of Italians and Greeks opened cheap cafes in London, but as living standards have dramatically improved in those countries, you're unlikely to find an authentic Italian or Greek place that is not at least a rung or two up from the bottom of the market.

Edit - in the same vein, you won't be seeing any cheap French, Norwegian, Qatari, or Canadain joins opening up soon, and while we've obviously got McBurgerKing aplenty, if you wanted a real hamburger cooked by a bona-fide American, that would cost you too...


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 30, 2011)

Most of my Japanese friends in London are also high flyers or don't even work. So yes, maybe that's why we don't have any low end izakayas.
My Japanese friends in japan are mostly deadbeats, ha ha. Izakayas and cheap seedy venues are where we hang out. Actually I am often just sitting in car parks at 3am drinking cheap family mart nihonshu.

Jesus that sounds terrible now that I type it.


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## George & Bill (Oct 30, 2011)

If I'm honest, it is a scene I find difficult to picture without also imagining that either a murder or a suicide is not also imminent.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Oct 30, 2011)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> My Japanese friends in japan are mostly deadbeats, ha ha. Izakayas and cheap seedy venues are where we hang out. Actually I am often just sitting in car parks at 3am drinking cheap family mart nihonshu.
> 
> Jesus that sounds terrible now that I type it.



yankee


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## gaijingirl (Oct 30, 2011)

Okonomiyaki is often associated with late night drinking, rough and ready "sanjikai" type places (in Japan drinking after work is often referred to as "hashigo suru" - climbing the ladder... one starts with the ichijikai - first venue - sober and then works up to the san/yon (3/4) + jikai. Okonomiyaki often ends up being one of the of the last stops.

However, it is not solely the preserve of the late night drinker. In my town we had a lovely, lunch-time okonomiyaki restaurant - much in the same one as one can eat ramen or yakiniku sober too!

Yes, Abeno is more expensive for okonomiyaki than in Japan. However, most sushi restaurants are more expensive than comparable sushi restaurants in Japan. In fact, IME, eating out in general, Japanese or otherwise, is more expensive in the UK.

As it happens, I'm not actually a big fan of okonomiyaki myself - but it certainly is a fun place to take children due to the "interactivity" of it - which is why I tend to use it. Also for my purposes it is conveniently located. At Abeno you can choose to have the okonomiyaki made for you or you can have a table with a hot plate and make it yourself. It is expensive for what it is (especially if you compare it to eating in Japan), but in terms of London eating - it's certainly not outrageous.

I think the reason that izakaya are so popular in Japan is that generally the Japanese don't go out to drink without eating at the same time. Every step on our "ladder" would involve food - even at karaoke there would be snacks. Even at the "snack" (hostess) bar there'd be nibbles. The izakaya offers food as an accompaniment to the drinks. We'd go to an izakaya to get drunk as the nearest atmosphere to a rowdy pub. Here we just have rowdy pubs.

This was in Tohoku though.. I have never come across people who can drink like Tohoku people. Unbelieveable stamina. Having gone back several times as a more mature "adult", I expected my friends to have calmed down... when I found myself out just like "old time" in a karaoke bar at 3am on a week-night, I realised that I might have slowed down, but they certainly hadn't


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