Ukai Ahoy

This week has been a goodie in terms of extracting maximum value from my Taste Card, I've used to for about three work lunches and on Thursday evening an old friend and I set out to explore what SW London had to offer in terms of heavily discounted sushi!

Apart from Ukai being situated a lot further away from Clapham Junction that I anticipated (stupid of me to assume that any Lavender Hill address had to be close to the station) it was actually a great success. The atmosphere of the place was really sweet - it was small yet sophisticated. The low lighting was bang on, with each table having it's own low-hanging ceiling lamp, and it set off the dark woods perfectly. Another HUGE advantage, as a TasteCard customer used to be told that the promised discount in reality only applies to those parts of the menu you don't want, my card got my 50% off on ALL food items.

Clearly, if the food is half the price you have have twice as much!!! So between us in the end we samples two varieties of noodle soup, the salmon and tuna sharing platter, the salmon hand roll, and a plate of salmon and avocado maki. The total price = £22 including drinks.

We went for the small bowls of noodle soup, and the portions were really pretty ample. Although I prefer my food with a bit of a kick to it, my seafood udon broth contained plenty of prawns, octopus and crab, and all in all was pretty tasty. However, I probably should have asked for some chili oil to add - my mistake!

The sharing platter was fairly ample. For it's full £10 retail price I might have found it a bit small - but then, what sushi place can you think of that makes a name for itself by stuffing it's customers? It containted sashimi, nigiri and maki and all tasted very fresh and delicious. C's handroll was enormous - and was apparently good enough that she was unwilling to share it!!! We'll take that as a firm thumbs up then.

To be honest, the food was very good but fairly unremarkable. Perhaps we didn't do it justice in that we didn't order very adventurously. Sometimes for a quick midweek supper you just want to stick with what you know you'll like and concentrate on having a good catch up. In terms of the deal we got, I would definitely return, but I think it might be a bit far for me to go on a regular basis as I suspect I could probably find a near identical restaurant nearer home. Still, if you're local to Clapham and don't mind a brisk walk to the mid-regions of Lavender Hill, I'd definitely give it the thumbs up. They also seem to do a pretty brisk trade in take-away.