8 Little Newport Street,
Chinatown,
London,
WC2H 7JJ
0872 148 1953
The ViewLondon Review
My main investigative mission over the past few months has been to track down a range of London restaurants where you can eat tasty, healthy, attractive and reasonably exotic food for (preferably) not a lot more than a tenner per person.
I must admit that my research has been mainly confined to the West End so far, but I’ve been very impressed with the results. The latest contender was Zipangu – a tiny Japanese restaurant a stones throw from Leicester Square tube station.
I popped in with a friend for a late lunch, and was immediately impressed by the genial hospitality of the waitress who, despite her virtual lack of English did a pretty good job of explaining the menu.
We took the easy option anyway – Tom went for the chicken teriyaki set meal and I chose the salmon teriyaki. This started with a decent size bowl of miso soup, and we got a couple of bottles of Asahi to wash it down with.
Next up was a round of sushi. Three vegetable maki and a salmon nigri each went down very well. After this came the teriyaki, which in both cases came on a bed of salad with a separate bowl of rice. Both the salmon and the chicken were simple and tasty – not incredibly sophisticated, but perfectly acceptable.
We were also presented with some little breaded and fried chicken pieces and some deep-fried tofu. I was quite amazed at how much food we were actually presented with – eating multi course lunches is not an every day occurrence, and this was great fun.
We finished off with another beer and dessert, which was a rather humble wedge of orange with the flesh separated from the skin. The whole lot came to under £25, and as a result Zipangu has gone right to the top of my list of exotic budget restaurant destinations.
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