#japanesefoodlondon

[onejamtart]

Inko Nito

As you can imagine, here at the OJT offices, we love good Japanese food and so when the restaurant group behind Zuma and Roka opened a more casual place called Inko Nito in Soho, we decided to go check it out.

The first thing you notice when you go in is that the place still has the open kitchen and robata grill that the Rokas and Zuma all have.

First dish delivered to the table was the Portland Crab tartare that came with chicken skin and nori. The crab itself was pretty nice in a mayonnaise-y sauce and a little bit of apple I think.  The chicken skin was a little disappointing in that it didn’t have much flavour.  Still, a decent start to the meal.

Pork and padron pepper skewers with wasabi shiso sauce.  These didn’t reall work unfortunately.  It was just a bit bland and the flavours that were there didn’t really mesh.  It’s a shame as it sounded great!

Next up was the Panko breadcrumbed chicken with a chilli yoghurt sauce.  This was really good!  The chicken was really well fried and was super crispy.  The sauce was tasty too.  The yoghurt helped counteract the heat of the chilli so you can mix as much or as little as you want depending on how you handle heat.

The Japanese version of cauliflower cheese.  This had parmesan panko and a garlic miso aioli.  I really liked this but was super heavy.  This would be a great dish in the winter but it was a little much in the height of Summer.

This was tofu kara-age.  This was one of my favourite dishes of the meal.  The tofu was almost melting in the middle of a crispy crust and covered in a cheesy sauce.  I loved just how tender the tofu was and the sauce was pretty awesome too.

We also ordered beef cheeks that came in lettuce wraps and a spicy korean miso.  The beef had clearly been cooked for hours as it was literally falling apart.  The sauce was a little spicy and tangy.  The lettuce was fresh and provided just enough contrast to the meaty rich beefiness of the cheeks.  I’d definitely order this again!

This was the Inko Nito version of grilled prawn toast.  You might be able to see but there’s clearly a lot more prawn in this version than in the standard chinese takeaway version.  This was pretty good, with the big chunks of prawn on crispy toast covered in sesame. 

We also ordered the bone marrow.  I love bone marrow so I was always likely to enjoy this and as expected, I did.  The toast was thin and crispy with garlic toast.  A mega rich dish with the buttery marrow but so good!

The last dish was a cobia collar with brown butter ponzu and lemon.  To be honest, I thought this was a tad over cooked but the flavours were really nice.  I think there were definitely better dishes on the menu that I’m not sure I’d order this again to be honest.

For dessert, we had a charred coconut soft serve with a sweet soy sauce and granola with a couple of sticks of pocky stuck in too.  This was a lovely end to the meal as the ice cream was quie refreshing compared to the pretty heavy meal we just had.  The sweet soy sauce and the granola were actually really good too.  The sauce was sweet but also still savoury and with the crunch of the granola, it just came together really well.

Overall, there were a few slight duds in the meal but there were a couple of gems too in the beef cheek and the tofu.  I don’t think this place reaches the heights of Roka but for a more casual place, it;s not too bad at all. 

Inko Nito, 55 Broadwick Street, London, W1F 9QS

Cheers, JL