Jidori
Japanese
15 Catherine St, Covent Garden, WC2B 5JZ
£
My one true love is my best friend (awwwww). When someone knows you so well, they know who they are competing with for your affections – who, or what, might clinch the top spot. For me, I will always struggle picking between those I adore, and the ultimate pleasure of food. If someone asked me to choose between never seeing a mate again or having to eat only porridge for the rest of my life, the mate would probably have to go (with only a couple of exceptions). Thus, for my birthday this year, she addressed the issue head on, bestowing on me the gift of half price food at some of London’s top restaurants: Time Out’s Dine Out for Two box.
Amongst this list was relatively unknown Japanese restaurant, Jidori. With only a couple of establishments (East and West), we chose to dine at the Covent Garden venue on Catherine Street: hidden away and a welcome escape from Saturday afternoon touristville. It had a funny little interior, with only a few small wooden tables with stools, a couple of tables outside, and just one waitress. It also had a private dining option complete with karaoke if you venture to the basement of the restaurant, however, this looked a tad too small for my liking…
The menu was concise but varied, giving an array of options to star. These were followed by some classic Japanese Yakitori dishes for the main event: essentially some delicious cuts of chicken, veggies or other meat grilled on skewers. The waitress advised we ordered a mix of 3-4 dishes per person, including sides. We went for the prawn gyoza (£6), tuna sashimi avocado wonton (£7) and chicken karaage (£6) to start.
(Apologies for empty plates - my hunger took over my better judgement and I forgot to photograph the mains)
Oh. My. God. The starters were SUBLIME – some of the tastiest gyoza I’ve had, with a delicious tuna sashimi complemented with crispy wonton base. As for the chicken karaage, a dish quite hard not to like but difficult to love (given the abundance of fried chicken in the world): I loved it. The yakitori mains were less impressive, we went for the rolled beef with mushroom option (£5.5), as well as the Negima, chicken thigh and spring onion (£5.5), and the Nasu, miso glazed aubergine (£4.2). The beef option had hints of orange in, which didn’t really go that well and were a kind of weird mix, the chicken could have done with more flavour (though it was perfectly cooked), and the aubergine portion was slightly stingy, in my opinion.
At such a perfect start, it was always going to be tough to keep momentum. Japanese food is, however, always delicious, and never leaves you feeling uncomfortably full. We finished the meal with a yoghurty panna-cotta like dessert (£6) which was forgettable, I admit, but a palette cleanser and plugged the gap to make me the perfect amount of full. Would I come back to Jidori? Probably, yes. My recommendation would be to order as many starters as possible, making it like a Japenese style tapas – and stick to the chicken yakitori options.
OVERALL RATING: ****
https://www.jidori.co.uk/
