Yoisho

Hugo

Unfeasibly good Japanese Food 3rd May 2008

3 found this helpful

Yoisho is stealth Japanese food at its best. The restaurant itself is low key, scruffy and about as posh looking as a chippy. However, absorb the details. It is full of Japanese, it looks like it has been going for ever, it is packed and the menu is stuffed with intriguing things I have not seen on most normal Japanese menus.

Apparently the restaurant is run by a famous ex-boxer who likes his grub, straight up, rough-ready but seriously tasty.

The waitress was fantastically helpful saying that the food style was like Japanese tapas and that if you are drinking then it was not the done thing to eat rice (after all Sake as your rice quotient in it).

The result was a heavenly journey into Japanese food: seaweed soup, crispy tofu, prawn and ginger crispy things (like a japanese pizza?), salmon belly, sashimi (I know this sounds implausible but I have never eaten such fresh sashimi, it was a whole new level of freshness that makes me suspect they have a small artificial ocean underneath the restaurant) and much more. I am almost fainting with pleasure just thinking about it.

Eating here is a touch dangerous because the tapas are small and so delicious that it is hard to stop yourself from feverishly ordering more and more.

The person I was with, who found out about this place from a Chelsea street flower seller and has recently been to Japan said that this more closely reflects the local experience. It won't be for everyone, it is noisy, not smart, a little chaotic (all of which i quite enjoy from time to time) but yoisho's raison d'etre is its sheer tastyness.

LondonistHazel

A Slice of Tokyo on Goodge Street 7th January 2008

5 found this helpful

This place is... mad. You step off Goodge Street and walk straight into a traditional little Japanese izakaya - not really a restaurant, more a tapas bar and it's clearly a Japanese place for Japanese people.

Not that we were made to feel unwelcome or awkward. Though we were clearly not Japanese, we were invited to sit at the counter where the chef leaned over the hot grills to guide us through the menu and give us subtle tips on how to treat the place. Like a tapas bar. Looking around, it was all about having a few drinks, reading the paper, chatting to your neighbour and ordering a small dish or two then repeating the process until the bar had shut and the tube stations were closed.

I was taken in hand by an extremely polite and friendly chap in London on business who helped me pick a few things from the specials list which was a hand-written slip of paper all in Japanese. My companion was being helped by the waitress who wanted to make sure we got things we would 1) actually eat and 2) despite our adventurous nature, she didn't want us to be totally freaked out or end up ordering too much / ordering too little.

We got just the right amount and were befriended by a rather over-excitable chap who was looking after a flock of extremely good looking female colleagues. Free beers with the chef after the place had officially closed and a sense that the party was only just starting as the bins were being taken out at 1am really sealed this place as somewhere special.

It wouldn't be like this for everyone, and not every trip is going to result in a slightly disorientating "I think I'm in downtown Tokyo, how do I get home?" blurry phonecall from a bus stop in Soho but just knowing something this authentic is in London restores my faith in London's capacity to host the finest food and people.