Shiki, a traditional Japanese restaurant in the beautifully historic neighbourhood of Tombland in Norwich city centre has been a place I had been desperate to try for a while. When I discovered through a friend that it does an 'all you can eat' night on a Monday evening for £23 a head I could not refuse!
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| Edamame |
As there was a big group of us the waitress first suggested that the chefs bring out a selection of dishes which are the most popular (as opposed to us ordering in the usual format on a sort of tick box sheet). We were more than happy with this (especially myself, who, despite loving the sushi rolls, and tempura prawns found in quite a number of eating establishments nowadays, actually had very little experience of ordering other traditional dishes). For those who are now particularly familiar with Japanese cuisine the menus are very helpful too, with English descriptions of the dishes, and pictures of the different types of rolls to help with your choices.
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| Chicken Katsu and Ebi Fry |
As the dishes were being bought out to us one by one, our table of eight was devouring them rather quickly, so we thought we would fill out a form of some definite options we would like to try after the 'chefs menu' had been completed. These included many more prawn dishes (we all loved the prawns!) but also another plate of rolls and a number of unique marinated meat dishes, such as the marinated pork dish pictured below.
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| Shoga Yaki |
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| Beef and Vegetable teriyaki |
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| Salmon Teriyaki |
I have to say, the selection that the restaurant provided was excellent, and I'm not sure there was anything I did not enjoy! It was also amazing to know that regardless of how much you ordered of the same thing, providing you ate it all, you would only be charged the one off rate of £23 (if you order a huge amount, but then cannot finish all of the dishes, they do understandably, ask for additional payment based upon the wasted weight of the food.
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| Tempura Prawns |
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| Nigiri |
All of the plates of food as you can see were presented beautifully and consisted of the absolute freshest ingredients. The rolls were colourful, sticky and filled to the brim with fish, meat and vegetables, something I was concerned about prior to attending as we could easily have been fed half filled rolls of mainly rice in an attempt to keep pricing down as much as possible.
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| Rolls |
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| Veggie Nigiri |
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| Maki rolls |
The excellent part about going in a large group is you can really get a feel for the huge variety in Japanese cuisine and order most of the menu, especially if you are surrounded by unfussy eaters! What I did like however is that you can order a minimum of 2 pieces of each thing, so if you did attend as a couple you would still be able to enjoy the experience and try a lot of the menu without having to have 6 or 8 of each roll which would be too filling.
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| Omelette and Eel nigiri |
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| Marinated tofu |
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| Sea bass and Eel Nigiri |
On top of the dishes pictured here, we also had another large plate of Californian and crab rolls, 3 bowls of chips with wasabi mayonnaise, a selection of vegetable (and an additional prawn) tempura, more breaded chicken and a bowl of miso soup each. As well as this the cost included a cup of coffee or tea, or a bowl of ice cream too.
I think that just goes to show the astounding value of this evening. Yes, £23 is not a cheap dinner as you can often find when indulging in set evening menus, but we really did order a huge amount of food - you could have practically rolled all of us out of the restaurant at the end, and the price of sushi is by no means cheap (let alone sushi at this high standard!). I will definitely be recommending to any sushi lover and also returning myself - even if it is on my own!!
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