Jidori – Covent Garden, London

I heard about JIDORI in the Monocle travel guide book I think, something about a well-priced yakitori restaurant. And well-priced it was! They serve an omakase menu (kind of like a degustation or tasting menu) for just £30 per person, for the whole table only. We love yakitori, so we thought we’d check it out!

Let me just say a few things about the restaurant. It’s fairly small (although I think there is an upstairs too), so make sure you book ahead. We arrived around 7pm and our welcome wasn’t exactly…warm, I suppose. The staff seemed extremely rushed, stressed and scattered. It was quite odd really. It was only when the restaurant emptied out by 7:30pm, save for a handful of tables, that we realised they were busy with the pre-theatre rush. Of course – because JIDORI is located in Covent Garden smack bang in the middle of all the theatres. The staff were definitely more relaxed and attentive after 7:30pm. It made us feel calmer and more relaxed too – at the beginning we actually felt really awkward, as if we had done something wrong?!

Aside from that, let’s get onto the food which, on the whole, we were so impressed with. I’d go back in a heartbeat. But perhaps at lunch, or after 7:30pm!

This was our omakase menu for the night, at £30 per person:

OTSUMAMI / SNACKS

• Tuna sashimi on tempura nori – incredibly delicious, we absolutely loved this dish. Tempura nori is a revelation to me, I want my nori tempura’d forever
• Edamame with fresh horseradish – what a genius idea to add fresh horseradish to edamame, I guess wasabi has the same kind of heat as horseradish so this is a sort of cross-cultural dining influence I suppose!
• Smoked aubergine in dashi – you could smell the smokey-ness of the aubergine immediately! However I will note that this dish was served cold. Like, icy cold. Like, it had just come out of the fridge, cold. I found this a bit odd, did they run out of time to ‘thaw’ it? This was served to us amid the pre-theatre rush so maybe they forgot to take it out of the fridge earlier?!

YAKITORI

• Sasami | Fillet in sake & shiso – delicious start to the yakitori part of our meal!
• Negima | Thigh & spring onion – it just gets better, the meat was so succulent and soft
• Tebasaki | Wings with lemon & togarashi – I wasn’t sure if the wings would come de-boned, but they were deboned enough and the meat soft enough for us to easily get the bones out. Sooo tasty!
• Kawa | Skin – oh man…chicken skin. So bad for you but so tasty. This was a really generous serving too!
  

Break: Tsukemono | Housemade pickles

YAKITORI (cont.)

• Reba | Liver – Chicken liver is pretty much the only offal that I eat. I think it’s because I grew up with it! This was super tasty and done well.
• Momo | Drumstick in red miso – The one thing that stood out to me about this dish was you could really taste the miso. It was layered on thick!
• Tsukune | Minced chicken with egg yolk – This is a must-order for any yakitori meal. Must say we weren’t disappointed!
• Ochazuke | Rice with genmai cha & chicken broth – Oh dear this wasn’t quite what I expected…I think rice in chicken broth made me think of the Hainan chicken rice, but unfortunately the genmai cha was very overpowering and it just tasted like bits of rice floating in green tea. I really struggled with this (and was also quite full already), probably because I had different expectations!

DESSERT

(The dessert was changed without us being told – on the menu it was Coconut water sorbet with elderflower sake, which I was quite looking forward to!)
Lemon and yuzu sorbet with cherry granita 

Overall, apart from the little service issues at the start, DS and I were both really impressed and satisfied with our meal. As I said about, I would go back! I’m glad I found this little place for when my yakitori cravings hit in London.

JIDORI
15 CATHERINE STREET
WC2B 5JZ
LONDON