In recent years, there has been a huge surge of ramen restaurants in London with restaurants like Ippudo and Shoryu opening up in all areas of the city. One of my favourite ramen joints is Kanada-ya that first opened up just opposite Centre Point in Tottenham Court Road and more recently opened up in Panton Street just south of Piccadilly Circus. When they then opened a third restaurant Machi-Ya, this time focusing on home cooked Japanese food rather than just ramen, we decided to go give it a go.
This was on the menu as tofu custard and was essentially a very soft tofu, almost like the dessert douhua. It came with a dashi sauce with spring onions and itogaki which is a dried shredded fish. It was home-made and I was really impressed. The flavour was fresh and the texture was silky smooth. The dashi and itogaki provided a bit more flavour to the mild tofu; really nice!
Next up was some yakitori; chunks of chicken with padron peppers and mushrooms skewered up and grilled. Good but nothing special. The chicken was juicy, the mushrooms and padron peppers were tasty.
A big bowl of niku udon. Great heart warming bowl of fragrant broth with tender slices of beef. This was exactly what you want in a bowl of soup noodles! The udon were firm with a great bounce to them. If I was to be a bit picky, I’d want a little more beef but otherwise; I really enjoyed this!
We also ordered a bowl of oyakodon. This was a bit bowl of rice with chicken topped with egg that had been simmered in a sweet and savoury sauce. A little like the udon, this was just a big bowl of comfort food. It was a little salty and personally, I’d like the egg just a little less cooked but again, I’m just being picky; I did really enjoy this.
We also decided to go for the wagyu katsu which according to the menu was to be cooked at the table. This is what arrived. The beef is clearly already been fried and just needs an extra bit of grilling on the pot. It came with some salt, lemon, wasabi, tonkatsu sauce and sesame sauce.
The beef itself was pretty good. You chuck it in the pot, let it crisp up a bit and then eat it however you want. You have to be careful not to overcook it but get it right and it tasted pretty good! I really enjoyed it with just a little bit of salt or the sesame sauce. I thought the presentation was a bit gimmicky and I think I would’ve preferred it just turning up freshly fried. This felt like a bit of a waste of really good beef but it was still tasty.
For dessert, we had a matcha fondant. Crack it open and molten matcha came pouring out. The cake itself though wasn’t really that cakey; it was almost mochi like with a little elasticity. I wasn’t blown away by this to be honest; it was a bit too sweet and a bit too much matcha. It was unfortunately a bit of a disappointing end to a really nice meal.
Machi-Ya, 5 Panton St, London, SW1Y 4DL
