Little Tokyo, Leeds; 17 Feb 09

Tuesday evening we fancied Japanese food and instead of going south to Teri Aki in Cambridge which is very good we headed north instead and ended up in Leeds at Little Tokyo. Actually that’s not true. It was number one daughter’s birthday and we went up to surprise her. The wife hatched a plot with Clare’s number 1 man, Alex, and we headed north.

Clare was at Uni in Leeds so we’ve been making the run for several years now and it doesn’t get any shorter. The bottleneck roundabouts on the A1 are slowly being eliminated and the last one caused us to seek refuge on the quieter roads of Lincolnshire instead of sitting in a jam. I was impressed with the condition of these roads, they compare very favorably with those in Cambridgeshire where we have suffered from a decade or so of under-investment. but that’s political and this is not a political blog.

We stayed overnight at Jury’s just south of the river and I’d recommend it. Not expensive but better equipped than other cheapo hotels. Problem was that it fronts onto a one-way street but none of the guides, neither the hotel’s on its web-site nor the street signs, recognise this. So we spent a frustrating 20 minutes within 50 metres of the front door trying to find a way of actually driving passed it. In the end we had to go north of the river and approach through the city centre. Be warned.

A good indicator of the authenticity and quality of an ethnic restaurant is the clientele. Teri Aki in Cambridge is generally full of East Asians (Japanese, Korean and Chinese). Just about everyone in Little Tokyo was European. However it was full which can’t be a bad thing because it wasn’t cheap.

The menu is interesting. It does sushi, including ‘anglo sushi’ which is sushi with ham and cheese (the mind boggles at other national equivalents. Would Scottish sushi feature a deep fried Mars Bar?), noodles, Japanese curry (isn’t that an Oxymoron?), bento box set meals and other specialties. It worked but to my mind it was too much. It was not especially good at anything but it wasn’t bad either.

I like sushi so was disappointed. There was too much salmon and not enough tuna. But to compensate I did get an Asahi super-dry beer. That is worth drinking. I also wimped out and had a sizzling steak which was fine but hardly Japanese. That was my choice.

But what was most important was number one daughter. Did she appreciate the surprise. I think she did and although the shoes we bought her (we as in wife and I; I delegated the actual buying to the wife) were not Jimmy Choo’s she seemed very happy.