Ichiban

1 Reviews on “Ichiban”

• Graham Stone

  I love japanese food, and have been to Ichiban quite a few times. I like the no-nonsense decor and friendly people, and food in the past has been fine for the money – it doesn’t try to be posh.However, sadly food quality has gone down, while the price has gone up. I went there Friday 28 April with my family. A meal for 3 of us cost over 70, and simply wasn’t worth the money. Here’s why.All three of us had udon noodles in soup, – an absolute japanese food basic. The soup doesn’t need to be complicated, just tasty and well seasoned. Sadly, the soup we had was barely different from hot water – tasteless, unseasoned. I guess if you passed it through some hi tech gear you might detect a hint of flavour somewhere, but we couldn’t!I had breaded pork in my udon, and it came with a thick strip of fat under the crispy coating. Blurghh! Maybe some people like this – I’ve never met it before, here or in Japan, and it wasn’t good. For me, the pork/udon combo was really poor for 11.50.We had tuna maki rolls, and they tasted and smelled WAYY too fishy for good sushi – maybe made on a surface that had recently had some stronger-smelling fish on it like salmon?We also had mixed prawn and vegetable tempura. The prawns were really good but the veggie versions were just big lumps of undercooked green pepper and sweet potato in batter. It wasn’t nice. The veggie pieces need to be smaller, so that they can at least cook a little under their batter, and not taste like something you’d use to keep a door open. Definitely not what I expected for 9.90.I asked for cold sake, and was given barely cool. But the sake was fine for the money.Ichiban needs to improve food quality dramatically to get me back there, or bring prices back down to what we’d expect for cafeteria-grade food.So Ganbatte! Ichiban! Please try harder. Do the basics better, improve value for money, and this loyal customer will come back.

  July 29, 2017, 4:13 pm

  Log in to Reply