J is for Japanese (10th Jan 2015)

http://www.itadakizen-uk.com/

Andrew pulled out all the stops on this one. Given that the month's letter was J and that Andrew has worked for a Japanese bank for a while, we suspected we may be going for a Japanese, which we were happy about as we don't often eat Japanese. Their vegetarian choices are often very limited as fish is a common ingredient and even if there is no fish in the dish, they often use fish sauce in everything - whilst we are not overly onerous in our veggie-ness and would eat dishes with fish sauce in them if we had too, we generally wouldn't see out such dishes and would avoid them if we could.

So it was a pleasant surprise when we arrived at the restaurant to fix it was a vegan Japanese restaurant! Perfect!

Itadaki Zen is near to Kings Cross station, and is a small restaurant with a cafe feel. Emma and I had no clue what anything was on the menu, despite the English transltions, but that didn't really matter and it was good to know that we were able to eat anything on there. We ordered a selection of dishes and all tried a bit of everything - there are a number of set menus that offer a good variety of dishes.

The food was really good and there was a surprising amount of it. Not that the portions were especially large, it's just that they were normal sized portions, and Joanne and Andrew had been hinting beforehand that we may go a little hungry - I think they were expecting some form of nouvelle cuisine of a single asparagus stalk in teriyaki sauce or similar! As it happens we ate very well and all the dishes had distinct, and pleasant tastes.

Dessert was interesting. Very few choices on the menu, none of which sounded appetizing but we thought we'd give them a go. The others went for a fruit jelly type thing (I don't think they realised it was jelly based when they ordered it!) which I thought was quite nice, if a bit sharp. The others were a little less taken with it! My own dessert was some sesame based concept that tasted a little like the middle eastern halva - nice, if not very refreshing!

We rounded off with some warm sake which I for one found nice, though a bit potent!

All in all a good meal and Emma & I would definitely be trying out again sometime.