Food and Drink - Restaurant review - Asakusa in Eversholt Street

Published: 10 February, 2011
by MATTHEW LEWIN

Forget the scare stories – dip into the world of sushi

WHEN the Hedge Fund Tycoon speaks, I listen, and he had been badgering me for months to visit Asakusa, which, at first glance, is a very unassuming-looking Japanese restaurant in Eversholt Street. He declares it the best Japanese restaurant in London.

We’d been there before, some 10 ago, when it was half empty and my memory of it was that it was actually very nice. What really stood out in our memories, however, was an amazing eel omelette – of which more later.

The Tycoon made a point of advising us to book a table upstairs and this I did. And after a tense few moments with a formidable mama-san who had a different view of our reservation, we did manage to find a table upstairs.

Asakusa, you will thus conclude, is now hugely popular and tables are at a premium. Significantly (whether or not this is a cliché), about 80 per cent of the customers seemed to be Japanese, and half of the rest were celebrities. Zadie Smith walked past (on her way to a table downstairs) and would you believe she didn’t even say hello?

There is quite a long menu including all the sashimi and sushi dishes you would expect, the large range of deep-fried and tempura dishes, as well as grilled meats and fish of every kind and a range of vegetarian and/or noodle dishes.

My recommendation to you all is to eschew the rather showy fried stuff in favour of the food that is most essentially Japanese – the sashimi and sushi. In a place as busy as this one, there can be no doubt that the fish is as fresh as it could possibly be – “Sushi quality” indeed.

Forget all the scare stories about raw fish, take your courage in your hands, dip that delectable piece of tuna into your little bowl of soy sauce mixed with wasabi (green mustard) and prepare for the most sublime experience.

We had yellow tail, tuna and salmon, and it was all superb, as were the spicy tuna sushi rolls wrapped up in rice and seaweed, and the excellent (“inside out” ie, the rice on the outside) California rolls. “You can always judge a Japanese restaurant by the Californian sushi rolls,” said our companion, the Tate Guide, and I am sure he’s right. This guy knows things like that.

Among the other dishes we ordered, some almost at random, were some densely packed spinach columns with sesame oil and flakes of dried bonito, and excellently succulent and flavoursome.

Then there was the eel dish, which was described on the menu as “eel with fried egg” but which was actually more like an eel omelette which is then sliced across the grain, as it were, and, seasoned with a little plum sauce. Utterly devine (and I am sure that I do not have to stress – yet again – that eels are merely long, thin fish, and are not snakes of any kind). Do not miss this dish.

All that actually amounted to quite a lot of food, and I was genuinely impressed to find that the bill, including three large Asahi beers, two glasses of wine and complimentary green tea, came to a grand total of only £70 for the four of us — a mere £17.50 each. Remarkable. Thank you, Mr Hedge Fund Tycoon.

SUMMARY

Excellent, busy, authentic Japanese food at very reasonable prices. Open for dinner only, Monday to Saturday. Expect to spend around £17 a head for food.

Rating: 4 1/2 OUT OF 5 STARS

ASAKUSA
655 Eversholt Street, NW1
020 7388 8533