Alternative Name: Hana Japanese Restaurant
Rating: 5/5
Address
Above the Center Point Food Store,
20-21 St Giles High Street,
London,
WC2H 8LN
Phone
020 7240 6147Type of Place:
What this place is, is a place where you can sit down in halfway civilized conditions and get some proper sushi. It ain't fancy, just good.
When you can't tolerate Yo!sushi or Kurukuru, try here. They have quite comfortable atmosphere too, so
it is good place when you want to take your friends out. Located next to Tottenham court road tube station,
very easy access from Soho or British Museum.
Food:
The generic Japanese food (teriyaki salmon bento etc.) is, well, it's OK. Don't actually order it. The point is that this place has some proper sushi cut by a guy who halfway knows what he's doing and it's usually fresh -- and that's for the same sort of price as Yo! Sushi. If you don't think that's an important point, maybe you should go to Wagamama or somewhere.
One of few sushi place you can taste real "Toro" in London.
Edamame is also good snack before your sushi plate. They also have several Bento boxes which is good for the people who can't be bothered to try to figure out the confusing oriental food names.
Atmosphere:
Good, clever Japanesey layout. Booths by the window are comfy for couples, the line of tables is good for big groups. The quiet touches of Japanese/Korean decoration seem to work better than you could reasonably expect and there are lots of quirks -- like the Korean replica crown in a case, and the way the signs are almost invisible from the street but seem to hover right in your face when you're sitting in a booth.
Service:
When the Cafe first started up, service consisted of a really really talkative old Japanese lady. She's gone back to Japan though and a parade of shy, awkward, mainly Korean waitresses has taken her place. I can't pretend it's the best service ever but I love them to death and I don't mind sometimes getting things in a funny order.
We got a FREE toro from the old Japanese chef a couple of times. The old man remembers us,
and always greets us with his kind smile. I say "Gochisou-sama-deshita!" to him when I leave the restaurant.
Unique Point:
The Cafe has its origins in the mass conversion by Korean businesses (or rather, by one Korean businessman who shall remain nameless) of the Center Point area into a kind of mini-Koreatown. There was a spare floor above the newly-built Korean grocery shop, and there was a sushi chef available, so they built the Cafe and it duly remained empty for the first three months. The few people who discovered it in that time faced a dilemma -- popularize it and lose an oasis of tranquility, or keep it secret and watch it go out of business. I'm one of those who chose the former course -- business was duly drummed up, newspaper reviews were made, and customers started to arrive, usually Western or Korean, hardly any Japanese. Despite a rather high pompous-Japanophile-English-twentysomething count, atmosphere remains good and there are lots of times when it's just as quiet as in the old days.
It's a combination of Korean business, Japanese fish, and really odd signage which to this day constitutes one of London's best-loved and most jealously protected food secrets.
wow