Not gross but not good either. I was really surprised at how unimpressive this food was.read more

Poor, poor service. Walked in and saw a sign that said additional seating is upstairs. I proceeded…read moreto walk upstairs before being stopped by a taller man with graying hair who gave me a stern look before handing me a menu, telling me "I'd need it." Ok, I thought. Seemed like he was overwhelmed by amount of people in the restaurant. I walked upstairs with my friend and it was completely empty. I sat down, waited for what seemed like forever before the waiter came upstairs to start setting the table beside me. He did not ask if I was ready to order, or if I needed water. He just walked back downstairs. Then, after another few minutes another woman walked upstairs, sat down, and he hurried up to give her her food. She was shocked at how quickly her food arrived. At that point, it became clear he was purposefully ignoring us and had no intention of serving us. My friend and I left, but they need to get rid of him. He lacks customer service skills and basic human decency.

This place is really popular and it's easy to see why!The budae jiggae portion was insanely big, so…read moremuch so that my friend and I had to take almost the entire pork udon home. The soup broth was so flavorful and they add a lot of different things in too :) I remember hearing a bunch of other customers pass our table and talk about how good the budae jiggae looked haha

This food was AMAZING!! We happened to stop by on a day trip to Brighton and I am so glad we did…read more We ordered the budae jjigae and udon with pork. The budae jjigae was so flavorful and I often dream about it. There were so many things in it including dumplings, rice cake, spam, mushroom, onions, kimchi, ramen, and so many other things! And the serving size was HUGE. The udon was great as well and the noodles were super soft. The sauce on it was immaculate!!

By now, everybody knows why high end Japanese cuisine is lovely - delicacy, craft, freshness,…read moresubtlety - the adjectives come tripping freely from the teased and delighted tongue. E-Kagen serves the other thing - the big, robust unsubtle Japanese food that fills you up and isn't nearly so polite about it. As such, despite being older, it is still among the more exciting places to eat Japanese food in Brighton. Wonderfully cheap, the ramen has punch, depth and comes beaded with soul-nourishing grease. I'm obsessed with Kimchi and the Kimchi ramen is orientalist soul food: hot, filling, spicy and with half a boiled egg in it. The perfect Sunday breakfast with the second best people watching in North Laine. Don't bother with the Sushi - I'm sure it's fine, but it feels like a necessary addition to a menu forced to court expectations - go for a proper hot meal and leave stuffed and happy.

I have mixed feelings about E-Kagen. I used to be a huge fan but been slightly disappointed with my…read moreexperiences the last couple times i went. Firstly, the food is great. I love their age-tofu, their kimchi ramen, and their katsu curry with egg. Their ramen is really standout, very fair pricing and fresh. Their sushi is good quality, some of the best quality you can get in Brighton, but portions are SMALL. If you are hungry or a big eater, be prepared to shell out lots of ££ if you're there for sushi. Problems - their weird and ever-changing opening hours. I feel like they change them all the time! I feel like I can never plan to go there because I'm not sure it will be open. Service - is friendly, but sporadic. I mean waiting forever to get tap waters, having to ask for share plates and the server being confused, and the last time i went the missed out on one of our mains (mine! :() so i had to wait another 15 mins while everyone else ate. All the problems being said - I still go back because if I want ramen or sushi, this is still my favourite.

Such a warmly place from the outside, but so cold when you're inside…read more Quite smily welcome, appreciate. Once we have menus, I can feel the problem from my stomach: Too many dishes/choices and very expansive. Plus, the service was as cold as the food. No smile, not even a word, can you feel it? The cold wind from the waiter.. Brrr. And then, the food is finally here, after 20minutes approximately, and obviously it was cold. I was here for my birthday, in summer, and my food was as cold as winter. Noodles were bad, tasteless, no savour at all, such a disappointment. I was so happy to sit myself on a rainbow bench with a good mood, but I'll never come back. I won't say you don't have to go there, I'm sure it depends of your taste, but it's a no for me.

Wagamama was one of my staples when I lived in Brighton, and it was just as good now…read more Wagamama has delicious food, and I really enjoy the ambiance. There are both communal and private tables, and they manage to have a fun and romantic vibe going on in their respective parts of the restaurant. Service is mixed; on our last visit, one server was great, one was terrible. (I remember it being this way years ago, too.) Service aside, it's a cool spot and the food is yum. Our duck wraps were amazing, chicken ramen got a thumbs up from me, and the boy loved his chicken katsu.

A surprisingly good yakitori restaurant in the heart of Brighton. Probaby closer to a 4 than a 5…read morerating but given the relatively slim options for this classic Japanese cusine in England it is absolutely worthy of your attention. Upon entry the interior will already give off some good signals - it looks and feels like you'd expect a proper yakitori place would be. It's also quite busy so clearly this is not a hidden gem for the locals. The food and drink was really good. Chicken was juicy, tender, and cooked to perfection; normally I don't like sauce on my yakitori but here what they used was subtle and tasty. The typical asparagus and bacon sticks with bacon however were were really, really good and may be the best versions of these classic skewers that I've ever had. Sake selection was also on point and not outrageously expensive like it is at other locations around the country. The server recommended a great one to me and was very well informed on the selection. What's not to love? This place appears to be often packed and if you're sitting at the bar expect to be squeezed in amongst other patrons. Very recommended if you're in Brighton!

There has been a lot of hype surrounding Bincho Yakitori, and my god do they live up to it!…read more They have a great bar which you can sit by and watch the chefs work, sadly there was no space (we luckily got a last minute reservation on a saturday night at 9pm) so we were seated at the back of the restaurant, quite a tight fit as our neighbours pinged their lemon slice over to our table, but no problem, the atmosphere was great! The concept is all small plates with the idea to share with the rest of the table. I definitely over ordered. My eyes were certainly bigger than my belly! To start we had pickles & kimchi - I always order these at other asian places. We then proceeded to order pretty much every vegetarian dish (my partner had the pork belly and chicken thigh skewers and said both were amazing). I asked our waitress how many she suggested, she told us 2-3 dishes each to start with then we can aways order more if hungry. But we are greedy greedy people so ordered an astonishing 9 dishes, it was definitely too much! Luckily I took it all home in a box and had it for lunch the next day. My favourite dish was the miso aubergine and the green salad. The green salad came with crispy lotus root and tamarind. Great sake selection, I opted for the nigori cloudy sake which was served traditionally in a glass, which is inside a masu - which is essentially a little wooden box. You may think this is strange, but the wood adds to the flavour of the sake. You can either drink straight from the box, or pour into your glass when you've finished the glass. Also had a great selection of Whisky which we of course sampled. Our bill came to just over £100 for 2 of us, and I am not ashamed to say £50 of it was all on whisky! I will definitely return, and maybe order less dishes, but still the same amount of whisky!

I'm picky about my Asian markets, and this is the one I end up going to most frequently in…read moreBrighton. In tandem with my biweekly organic japanese vegetable box from nama-yasai, this supermarket tends to have everything I need to round out my Japanese pantry. There's little in the way of goods from other Asian countries, so while the cuisines often share ingredients in common -- soy sauce, sesame oil -- just note there's not much Chinese fare on offer, and just a scant smattering of Korean seasonings that are popular in Japan. Among the items they have in stock that you will likely find it difficult to find elsewhere (and I say this because I tried to find them elsewhere) are: - Katakuriko, or potato starch, commonly used similarly to how corn starch is used in other cusines and of course gluten free! - Konyakku, a block of yam cake seasoned with seaweed (like shirataki noodles, which they also stock, but the solid block form can be harder to find) - Mountain vegetables, used in stews and one pot meals - Chikuwa, or grilled hollow cylindrical squid cakes - Frozen sushi grade fish - Japanese style cake mix and pancake mix, which are different from one another, and used by a ton of recipes on cookpad website They also carry fresh Japanese foods made in house, of which the harder-to-find offerings would be takoyaki (fried octopus/squid inside spherical dough), onigiri (rice balls with a filling in the center), and mochi/daifuku (a type of dessert made from sweet rice pounded into a dough and a sweet filling in the center). And while I mean no offense to E-Kagen, here are things I don't recommend you get there, or which you can't get there: - Umeboshi (japanese pickled plums), because they're not the tastiest and overpriced for the small quantity... see if you can get the jarred Clearspring ones from Infinity foods instead. - Umeboshi purree, because it's common in Japanese recipes to request chopped Umeboshi to be added to something, especially a dressing, and it's cheaper and faster to use this item instead... E-Kagen doesn't carry it, so you'll need to go to hiSbe for it. - Shiso-ume seasoning, commonly used with rice... E-Kagen doesn't carry it, but neither does anybody in Brighton. Le sigh. - The selection of fresh japanese vegetables is limited (this is true of anywhere in Brighton) and you will probably need to go to Japan Centre in London for what you seek, or order a vegetable box like I do. Credit card minimum is 10 pounds, and they charge extra for packets of condiments if you are buying any of their ready made food (e.g. packets of soy sauce and wasabi carry a charge). The staff is always very friendly and you can ask them if you're looking for something specific, though sometimes the answer is that they don't have it!

The young man at the counter was NOT pleasant. We were in to celebrate the birthday of a friend…read more The broth was bland, at best. Limited options and NO willingness to deviate from the menu. We ordered hot sake and it was ice cold. Then he had an attitude when asked to make it right. NO apology or sincere concern about our enjoyment. Please avoid this place. AND they ran out of proper sake glasses and offered a water glass so gauche!!

Not the biggest place, but I think that is part of it's charm. Squeezed into the The Lanes in…read moreBrighton, the menu is simple and tasty. The service is efficient. Just the kind of place you need when you just want something hearty to eat. I'll let the photo do the talking. try it, you won't be disappointed.

I personally love Yo Sushi, The waiters are nice, the conveyor belts are cool, the drinks are good,…read moreI love everything about it, yes, it can get a bit pricey, but it's still has delicious food and I love going here.

Favourites: Avocado Roll…read moreSeaweed Salad Aubergine in Miso Pumpkin Korroke Tofu Curry Chocolate Mochi I've brought people from Canada whenever they come over and even though there are better sushi places (for quality fish) you can't NOT have a good time and NOT be super satisfied/stuffed when you leave. Hence why I have been here... well, I won't say how many times actually. Shhhh. Deals: Student Discount - 25% off Blue Mondays - all dishes priced at £2.30 Super! Sumo! Sundays! - all you can eat buffet for £20 Random times during the year and your birthday month - 30% off the bill Set Priced Menus - more for newcomers when you don't know what to eat

Successfully converted my girlfriend to the religion of Ramen! 5/5!…read more Arrived at 8pm without a reservation and it was pretty busy. Two other groups were waiting for tables. Always a good sign! Made a reservation for 8:45pm and went out for a drink. Make sure to make a reservation on Fridays! I ordered a Tokyo Tonkotsu (large with no extras) and a Kirin beer and my girlfriend ordered a Wakame Ramen (medium with extra pickled ginger) and a plum wine! The ramen was really really good. It looked like Jason Pollock splattered my t-shirt with Pork Bone broth afterwards! The large portion for more than enough (and we had just finished a long walk and we're starving). I would recommend adding extra pork but that's the only thing I would change. The extra pickled ginger also supposedly went really well with the Wakame (chicken) ramen. I will be coming back here soon and bringing the rest of the family!

Not bad for a random ramen spot on the English seaside…read more The Tokyo Tonkotsu bowl is less like the complex, thin broths at self-aware ramen shops across NYC and more like the hearty, no-frills ramen I had in Japan (e.g. Tenkaippin!) - so unctuous and flavorful that the broth is undrinkable at the end. I was expecting something more watery and clean-tasting from the vegetarian soy milk ramen. What came instead was thick and rich, nearly as heavy as the tonkotsu (minus all that salt). It had no soybean flavor, but I can see it being a holy grail for vegetarians who want to experience the luscious guilt of a fatty pork broth. I'm still conflicted (my palate wanted soy milk!) but it was certainly tasty. The karaage was not what I expected either. It's more a boneless tebasaki - fried chicken morsels given the Japanese chicken wing treatment, coated in a thin, sweet soy glaze. I liked it but was craving the typical, dry karaage fried lightly in starch. I do wish the bowls had been served hotter. They use thin noodles (apparently made in-house?!) and wanting to retain the noodle consistency is one excuse for serving a broth less than boiling hot, but the noodles got soggy quickly anyway. Manager and staff are friendly. Actual Japanese people come here willingly! 10% student discount helps with the £8 pricetag.

I LITERALLY LOVE THIS PLACE. I've been here so many times. Even if it doesn't look so fancy, the…read morefood is the best. The tempura is soo good and you can choose what kind of noodles you like along with sides. The service is good and served with not long of a wait. They're polite too!! The ambiance was nice, it's cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

This place is so good, it takes roughly 3-5 minutes to be cooked, the service is on point, there 1…read moremeal portions are the size for 2 people, i do think it is a little overpriced, £10 for 1 bowl of ramen. They provide chopsticks yet if you can't use them they will give you cutlery. The taste is good and my favourite part, I love drinking the soup. The restaurant looks worse than it is, the food is quality yet I believe they can do better via decoration.