Jim had wanted to go there for ages. I’d changed his mind a few times before, mostly because I couldn’t be arsed to walk from Colmore Row, but mostly because there were other options available, options I knew and trusted. This time I promised we’d go, and we did, shortly after glorious drinks in the blazing sun on the terrace of Eighteen had stopped when it suddenly pissed it down. Inside Tokyo Izakaya looks like it could be an izakaya in Tokyo; small enough to not be able to swing a tuna, with a kitchen behind a curtain to carve one up. The chairs are hard, the menus scruffy, the bar well stocked with Japanese whisky.
Jim tells me that they are known for their sushi. Neither of us order sushi. Instead we get karage that’s like biting into blu tac, a gummy, I’m-quite-sure-it’s-cooked texture that tastes vaguely of garlic and little like chicken, along with a starter platter of good butterflied prawns dusted in panko breadcrumbs and deep-fried, unremarkable deep-fried chicken wings, deep-fried spring rolls that don’t have enough duck filling, and really good balls of octopus given interest by kewpie mayo and bonito flakes which I’m very sure have been deep-fried.
When they do step away from the bubbling pot of oil the results are way more interesting. Both the yakitori dishes, asparagus and chicken, are excellent examples of the light binchotan charcoal flavour being omnipresent without overloading it, cooked lightly and with skill. The prawn yakisoba is also very good, if not groundbreaking in flavour. What it lacks in intensity it makes up with balance and accuracy. All the parts work.
The bill is about £50 each, though that’s with a good amount of Japanese whisky for me and a beer for Jim. Would I rush back? No. Am I glad I tried it? Yes. As we walk to Chinatown I ask him what score I should give it. He says seven, so seven it is. We probably should have ordered some sushi.
7/10
