TL;DR: Decent Japanese food, and if you just have a bento box it's very good value for money. Also wouldn't recommend the tempura. 6/10
Came in for a very late lunch (about 5pm, so maybe an early dinner? Linner? Dunch?) and had a tonkatsu curry bento, ebi tempura, and a St Sushi ISO, with a hot green tea. This came up to £22.95.
St Sushi ISO: ISO stands for 'inside out', which means the rice is outside of the nori sheet. The fish and other ingredients are however, still inside of the roll rather than outside, which is a slight disappointment. Salmon and avocado inside, nori sheet, sushi rice with flying fish roe coating (the roe, or tobiko, are the little red/orange fish eggs). Avocado with salmon is a classic combination in sushi for good reason, the slight creaminess of fresh avocado playing perfect accompaniment to the salmon. The only way to improve it would be a bit of ginger, a dash of wasabi, and perhaps better quality ingredients, but for £3.50 the quality is great. 7/10.
Ebi tempura: prawn tempura. The prawn was well cooked, but the batter left much to be desired. It was tasteless and felt stale, which leaves me baffled as the batter makes me feel as if it's been cooked in advanced then reheated but the prawns are just fine. The batter is too important a part of tempura to ignore, thus dragging the dish down to be deep fried in abject mediocrity. 5/10.
Tonkatsu curry bento: deep fried breaded pork cutlet in Japanese curry served with white rice. The bento includes Japanese pickles, a small salad, and 2 pieces each of cucumber maki, salmon sushi, and salmon sashimi. The sashimi is good. The sushi isn't. The difference in quality of the fish used is immediately clear and the sushi rice is slightly too vinegary. The pork is well cooked, no complaints there. The curry is decent, but a little sweet for my liking, it also has a certain packet prepared quality to it, I'm not sure what it is about it, but it feels like the curry base came from a packet. I'm not saying that's the case, but to me, that's what it feels like. 6/10.
Bento boxes are good value for money and the salmon sashimi is good. If you like slightly sweeter curries then this is the place to go. Other than their curry dishes though, their teriyaki is pretty good as well, solid 7/10 from what I remember (not my first time here). The place to go for decent Japanese food at good value for money. read more