Miyajima Restaurant
196 Lavender Hill
London
SW11 1JA
http://www.miyajimarestaurant.com
Date visited: Friday 29th April 2011 – day of the royal wedding
Attendees: Myself, The Baby and Gromit (silent attendee and not eating)
Price of meal: set lunch menu £6.50 for 2 courses, meal total approx £10 per person with tap water
It was the day of the royal wedding so the Baby and I go to a pub in Clapham to watch it with lots of other people and soak up the atmosphere. After the main TV coverage is over we head off to get some lunch. We decided on Miyajima because I had not been there before but it always looked really nice whenever I walk pass and the Baby had been raving about it.
It was a pleasant surprise to find out that Miyajima had a lunch deal when we got there so we went in. Miyajima looks very nice and clean. The seating is on long communal benches at canteen tables. The whole restaurant is painted in blacks, dark browns and deep red with other bits of furnishing running along the oriental theme. We found that we were the only customers in the restaurant so service and food delivery was quick. Having gone through the regular menu and the set lunch menu both the Baby and I decide to go with the set lunch which had an excellent selection to choose from.
Starters:
Myself: Vegetable gyoza with soya dipping sauce
The Baby: Vegetable spring rolls with soya dipping sauce
Veggie gyoza (you get 4 but I had begun eating before remembering to take a photo) with dipping sauce
Veggie spring rolls (you get 4 but as you can see the Baby started eating them) and dipping sauce
The vegetable gyoza was lightly filled and tasted nice – good for the price. I think shredded cabbage was the only filling, I didn’t taste or see anything else in it. The Baby’s vegetable spring rolls seemed crunchy and there was more filling in them than just cabbage, I saw carrot in it for a start and she said she enjoyed them. If you are down at Miyajima having the set lunch and want a veggie starter I would say the vegetable spring rolls seem better value for money than the vegetable gyoza.
Main course:
Myself: Chicken oyako don
The Baby: Tofu curry noodles
To share: Dragon roll (cooked eel and avocado large sushi roll)
Miso soup and a hearty Oyako don
Noodles with curry sauce and tofu
Dragon roll
The mains came soon after the starters and my chicken oyako don came with a miso soup. The bowl seems quite small but there was quite a bit in it with a decent portion of chicken. It was all well cooked but the chicken could have been better seasoned. The soup was made from instant powder it seems. The Baby seemed to have enjoyed her noodles and chomped them down. From what I could see the noodles were thin rice noodles with some tofu steaks all covered in a beige curry sauce – it all seemed very beige. The dragon roll was much bigger than I thought – we got about 10 rolls and they were quite big and it tasted very nice.
Summary: Good value for money in a nice setting. It is a decent local noodle-sushi restaurant, nothing fancy and if I were in the area I wouldn’t hesitate to return for a meal there, especially for lunch.
Noodle notes's Blog 