With its smartly geometric red, white and black frontage and the name in orange, this modern restaurant on Waterford's bustling High Street would be hard to miss. The city's first Japanese restaurant, it opened in 2015 and got off to a flying start thanks to its good location, attractive pricing - and very tasty food.
The narrow street frontage opens up to reveal a good-sized restaurant, simply decorated in the same basic colours, with lovely murals - “Japanese lady”, “Flowers” - and soft music playing in the background. Nice big plain wooden tables have a bench with cushioned seats along the wall and a separate wooden bench on the outside. Everything is very precise - each table has the menu, a lovely wooden container with their logo on it filled with lime green chop sticks, also a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce and 2 lovely little ceramic bowls on each table.
Friendly Asian staff take guests straight to the table and, recognising that they are bringing a new experience to Waterford, husband-and-wife team Maorong Zhuang and LingLing Shi include a welcoming introduction on the menu. This explains helpfully that, traditionally, there are no starters or mains in street food cuisine.
Better still - and something that is sure to attract by-passers spotting this on the menu at the door - is the statement: “We NEVER use MSG”. Also, they state on the menu that all sushi is prepared freshly to order and not left over from the previous hour, which is sure to impress.
An extensive sushi menu is offered, including Sushi Nigiri (rice ball served with a slice of filling); Norimaki (rolled in seaweed); Hosomaki (small pieces rolled in seaweed); and Futomaki (big pieces) and some Sashimi. The wide selection will delight sushi fans, but there's plenty of choice for everyone as the second part of the menu offers an equally wide choice of broadly Asian dishes, ranging from popular noodle dishes - including Teriyaki Soba (grilled choice of meat with fried egg noodles and teriyaki sauce), ramen (traditional bowl of noodle soup, available with meat, poultry, seafood or vegetable and tofu) - to stir fries and curries, including ever-popular Thai Green Curry.
There's also a section of 'Sides' which roughly translate as starters in Western terms - tempura prawn or duck spring rolls, for example, so you can have a more familiar style of meal if you like, rather than having everything at the same time.
You can have a variety of 2, 5 or 8 pieces of any sushi but a good way for sushi newbies to start would be the Chef's Selection of five or twelve pieces (€8/18 respectively).This - rice ball with prawn, salmon, tuna, octopus and tofu, for example - is presented on a lovely black plate with wasabi and pickled ginger, all very fresh and beautifully presented. The server explains that you put some of the wasabi in the little bowl on the table and mix with the Kikkoman then, after each piece, you have a bit of the ginger to cleanse the mouth: simply delicious.
For 'mains' you might try Cha Han with Chicken (Egg fried rice served with chicken, spring onion, broccoli, sweetcorn, ginger and garlic), a superb dish all mixed together in a bowl, it's freshly cooked, piping hot and with a lovely crunch to the vegetables. An equally delicious flat noodle dish is Pad Thai with Chicken & Prawn, with egg, onion, carrot, pepper, beansprout, tamarind and peanut - full of flavour and sure to become a favourite.
Desserts are western style - banoffee pie, chocolate fudge cake, ice cream ‘delight’ and jelly ice cream, for example - but there's good coffee as well as several very well-priced wines, the traditional Japanese drink sake and Asian beers.
There's also a daily “Bento Box” - a combination of small dishes such as smoked fish, duck spring roll and chicken curry plus miso soup - which is highly popular and available all day.
All round Kyoto is a super place and highly recommended: everything is fresh, piping hot, served on warm plates and absolutely delicious - and the very pleasant staff look after everyone admirably.
