ITSU (Picadilly): eat beautiful

18th October.
After a meeting at Burlington House, we needed somewhere to eat that was convenient, and not a big hit. My wife suggested Itsu, and although we are not great consumers of Japanese food, I was recommended that the noodles had been found to be acceptable in the past.
We were told the place closed at 9.30 pm, and arrived about 8.30, when it was not busy at all. I think it may be a largely lunchtime activity with take out, as some of the dishes are lunchtime only. There is an extensive but possibly slightly pretentious web page at http://www.itsu.com/ and in the restaurants there is a menu with pictures just in case you are still in doubt. No alcohol was in site, just strange soft drinks.
We started with an omega 3 salmon supreme. This is very pretty to start with, and we should have guessed that the salmon was only there in small quantities. I should have photographed this at an earlier stage.

We are not great lovers of Sushi, and I consumed most of this, which was most acceptable, but I think I would have preferred it with some of the green horseradish based condiment, which I could not find. There is a little bottle of soy sauce in the packaging.

For main we both had the chicken with udan noodles in dynamite (not really) broth. This came in a pot to take away, and was tricky to decant in the bowls supplied to us.

This was hot and tasty, with a good helping of chicken. Scored a 8.8 on the CHOF scale. I think a greater selection of sauce condiments could have helped but as I am not a great aficionado of Japanese food, it may have been quite authentic.

For desert we tried the zero fat fro go frozen probiotic yoghurt with blueberries and one with honey cashews

I am a fan of plain yoghurt, and quite liked this. There was probably too much for a single helping with what we had had before. As this is very low calorie (the yoghurt component of the above container was said to be 99 calories) and fat free we could not work out what it was. The nutrition guide says most of it is carbohydrate. You get more than in a similar nutrition-value pot of diet yoghurt from a supermarket, so it must be in the whipping up process. I liked the slightly sweet taste, but not everyone would. Interesting, but I might not make a habit of this. A meal for two excluding drinks came to about £27 eat in. If you come to a branch of Itsu in the half hour before closing, you can buy what they have left in sushi packs for half price if that is what you want to take home with you at 9 in the evening.