Best Japanese restaurants in Leeds

Written by Carol Ferndale

In the UK, Italian, Indian and Chinese restaurants are ubiquitous, but you have to search a little harder to find Japanese restaurants. However, it’s good to see that Leeds has one or two good places to enjoy Japanese food. One of the most popular Japanese dishes is sushi which is vinegared sticky rice with little slivers of raw fish, cooked egg, or vegetable.

Sublime eating experience

As for the raw fish, don’t let anybody try to convince you otherwise, those little slivers just melt in the mouth, and the pickled ginger and soy sauce just makes the whole eating experience totally sublime. If you want to spice things up a bit, there is wasabi, which is like a Japanese version of horseradish sauce, but green.

Yo! Sushi

So where can you enjoy sushi in Leeds? At Harvey Nichols on Briggate you will find a branch of Yo! Sushi where the dishes are prepared fresh behind the counter you are sitting at, and then placed on a conveyor belt that makes its way around in a circuit.

You just pick the dishes off the belt that you fancy, and they are colour coded so you know how much you will be paying at the end. You can choose from 91 dishes, including sashimi, maki and nori wrapped hand rolls, as well as hot dishes such as chicken katsu curry.

Kabuki

An independent and local sushi shop is Kabuki up at Leeds University Union, and they will soon be expanding with a restaurant in the city centre on Park Square, along with a name change to Sesame.

Sesame uses ingredients that are local and from sustainable sources. They do delicious sushi with crab, salmon, sea bass, tuna, and prawn, as well as ones with egg and vegetables. Sesame do a delivery service with boxes of nigiri, maki and roto, served with wasabi, soy, and pickled ginger.

They also do sticky rice salads, such as spiced chicken, as well as Japanese miso soup which is a great accompaniment to any Japanese dish. If the sushi that Sesame do up at the uni is anything to go by, the city centre Sesame will be one to seriously look forward to.

Wagamama

Moving on from sushi to yet more varieties of Japanese food, a good one to try is Wagamama, which offers not just positive eating, but positive living too. Wagamama in Japanese means “selfish”, but I won’t hold that against them because they are simply brilliant, with a great menu focussed mainly around rice dishes, noodle dishes and salads.

Here you can get that ever-popular Japanese classic ramen, which is a big bowl of noodles in soup. In the UK you might get a bag of chips on your way back from the pub, in Japan you sit down and have a bowl of ramen. You can also get yaki soba which is fried noodles, and such staples as chicken katsu curry.

Wagamama do some gorgeous salads, like green tea noodle mixed with scallop and bacon, and other wildly imaginative salads. They also do some healthful fresh juices such as carrot and ginger, as well as Japanese beers and sake. The Wagamama in Leeds is on Park Row, just a few minutes from the railway station and close to the shopping area.

Fuji Hiro

If yaki soba is the Japanese food that you love, then you will find plenty of these mouthwatering fried noodles at Fuji Hiro. You will also find ramen, rice dishes, soups and green tea. There is plenty of choice for both vegetarians and carnivores, and it is particularly good to see that staple of the Japanese diet tofu is on the menu.

The decor is minimalist, but actually not dissimilar to a lot of eateries in Japan. Fuji Hiro is on Wade Lane, at the side of the Merrion Centre, and its informal cafe-style makes it an excellent place to bring children along to. You will find a vast array of shops nearby the restaurant, so it’s the ideal place for a lunch break.

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