Friday Night Testing Out Yatta

Last Friday evening I was treated to a visit from my best girl Jessie, so we decided to take her out for some food. It was decided we should test out Yatta, the latest incarnation on Nelson Street. Over the years this has been many different Asian restaurants, Shanghai Express, a personal favourite, the Wok Cafe and Buddha Lounge to name but a few. Yatta offers an all you can eat sushi experience for £16.80, per person, but also a half price on all al la carte menu items at lunch time. 

We were given a warm welcome  by the staff and led to a table for four. They provide a tick box menu to order your chosen dishes. One side of the menu consists of sushi and the other hot dishes and sides. You are limited to ordering 6 from each side for each round. There is a pretty large selection, gyoza, wok fried noodles, teriyaki and tempura as well as futomaki, sashimi and nigiri to name but a few. We ordered a selection of dishes from both sides and waited for them to arrive whilst sipping our drinks. The lighting could be a little more subtle in the evening I found it a little too bright for my tastes. 

chicken gyoza

chicken karaage

prawn tempura

spring rolls

The food arrived promptly. The dishes I found to be mixed in quality. Our chicken udon ramen was tasty and well cooked, the sushi was well prepared and pretty delicious. The sashimi in particular was thick and fresh. Some of the other dishes could have done with a few changes to make them a bit better. The tempura prawns for example were a little soggy and needed more frying for colour and crispness. The chicken kara-age were nothing like any I've ever tasted and were not at all crisp. They need to make just a few tweaks to some of their hot dishes to bring them up to the same level.

Having said that for £16.80 for unlimited orders you could quite happily order a lot of sushi, sashimi and noodles. I would return again but it wouldn't be the top of my list. But for groups it is quite a good way of trying out lots of sushi dishes for a decent price. I certainly have my eye on the karaoke place above Yatta. To find out more about Yatta visit their website for more menu details,

A Sunday Curry at 4500 Miles From Delhi

Finally a new blog post, feels like it's been a while, I have no excuse, but I hope everyone has been keeping well and enjoying the typical unpredictable weather we have come to expect in Summer. So on Sunday we headed on down to 4500 Miles From Delhi with Jamie, Boz, Phil and Javier to sample the curry buffet. Curry is not something I generally eat at lunch time, it feels way more of an evening meal type of cuisine to me, but here I was ready to be tempted. My first impressions were good, they have done a lovely job of sprucing up the old La Tasca restaurant, which was so dark and gloomy, now the place is wonderfully light and welcoming. 

So after receiving our drinks order we headed on over to the buffet area to see what was on offer. The choices are not as plentiful as one might expect at all you can eat buffets such as Za Za Bazaar and Cosmo but this is not necessarily a bad thing, if it is cooked well. The first options you come to are a mound of poppadoms, chutneys and other starters like tikka chicken wings.

First signs were good, the chutneys are all home made and nothing was swimming in grease it all looked lovely and fresh so I helped myself to a load of poppadoms and mango chutney, some chilli chicken, vegetable pakoras, tikka chicken and seekh kebab. The mango chutney was lovely, fruity but not too sweet like ones from a jar, it was a shame the poppadoms tasted a little stale but I suspect they are quite hard to keep super crisp in a buffet style environment. The seekh kebab was a touch dry but nicely spiced but the tikka chicken was well done, not at all dry and actually had a bit of a kick to it. I think my two favourites of all my starters were the vegetable pakoras, they weren't at all greasy and you could really taste the cumin. The chilli chicken was also really tasty, almost like a sweet Thai chilli chicken. 

What was interesting about the food was that it actually had varying levels of spice in the dishes. It can be tempting for buffet restaurants to keep spice levels at a low to cater for people with a small tolerance for spice, but 4500 Miles for Delhi were a bit more adventurous and some of the dishes did have a good kick to them which was a refreshing change. 

After our starter plate Rich and I moved on to the curries, there were three vegetarian mains, as well as a couple of side dishes, and three meat main curries. I sampled all the meaty mains, chicken tikka masala, lamb rogan josh and chicken chettinad, I also had a spoonful of the palak paneer, a creamy spinach dish with big chunks of paneer. Again I was on the whole impressed, the chicken chettinad was the best of the meat curries but actually I still preferred the palak paneer over all, earthy yet still slightly creamy and it perfectly complimented the texture and subtle flavour of the paneer. What is a nice touch is they bring a bowl of freshly cooked chapatti bread to have along side your curry, and very nice they were too.

curry medley

fresh chapatis

On the whole I was pretty impressed with 4500 Miles from Delhi, the curry was of a good standard and the home made chutneys and fresh chapatis showed care for the small details, I still am not sure if I am a big lunchtime curry person, although the place in St Nicks has tempted me on occasion, but I would definitely revisit this restaurant but perhaps in the evening. As far as I am aware they also do a la carte in the evening which allows for wriggle room for customers who don't really fancy the buffet experience. Buffet prices for lunch are £10.95 for the three course buffet experience or £7.95 for the two. To see what 4500 Miles from Delhi has to offer check out their website.