Imagine.........

Although this review is kind of retrospective, it's the reason that i'm still sweet talking my liver. The lovely other half took me out to celebrate on Saturday night to a local Japanese cafe, it's run by a bunch on Japanese students who take over the local greasy spoon every Wednesday to Saturday evening after six pm. It is incredibly make-shift, but it is reasonable, bring-your-own and very friendly.

As it's a bring-your-own set up we always make sure that we take plenty of wine with us, always seems that you can drink much more when you're not paying over inflated restaurant prices; so we went armed with just three bottles between the two of us and extraordinarily big bellies!

The place is set up in a kind of tapas style menu, with lots of small dishes available to share or to have as starters and they also do a selection of main course size dishes. Because we hadn't been for such a long time we felt that we should sample the new dishes on the menu as well as few old favourites. To nibble on whilst we decided what to order we had delicious pork dumplings (gyoso - i think?) that were really light in flavour but very moreish as well as some ebi prawns (king prawns in bread crumbs) and some classic tempura king prawns, all served with a chilli dipping sauce and a miso based sauce for the tempura prawns - which is nice enough to drink on its own. Starters we decided to have a prawn bowl, more fantastic prawns in tempura batter with mixed salad leaves and a soy sauce based dressing, and for main course we shared Kimchi Udon Noodles, thick noodles with pickled and spiced cabbage and prawns (can't tell we really like our seafood?) and terriyaki salmon, wich was cooked to perfection. All of this was washed down with our own wine, and the entire bill came to just £55, including corkage.

It was a fantastic laid back evening, and if anyone is ever starving in Harborne I would recommend that they check this place out. Friendly staff and delicious food, what else can you ask for?