My Lovely Blogaki

This Friday, I went to a Japanese restaurant in Birmingham City Centre with my husband.

I, who is Japanese, am not keen on going to Japanese restaurants overseas, as they tend to be overpriced and inferior in quality comparing to the ones I used to in Japan.

But it was his request on his name day, so I grudgingly accepted.



This is seafood and vegetable tempura dish.

I am not a big fan of tempura, but I as it is typical Japanese food, we had to try.

For £7, it was not bad, although the batter too large and oily (but I think the British prefer in this way). I liked very much baby corn tempura that we don't find in Japan. Nice and cruntchy.



Once you are in Japanese restaurants, you cannot really avoid sushi. This is the most expensive of the three sushi sets the restaurant offers. For £10, I think the choice of fish is poor, but I cannot NOT using my Japanese standard, which probably is pointless in Birmingham context.



These are yaki-tori dish for £3, good value for money, I thought. This would be a perfect starter, or an accompaniment for a glass of beer.

With some drink and a bowl of rice, we paid £25.10. It is probably reasonable price for a Japanese restaurant in Birmingham.

Most importantly, the husband was happy. That was all that count on that day.

If you look for somewhere you can eat well without spending a fortune in Birmingham, the best place to go is Chinese cafes. They are not so nice to be called "restaurants", but they serve freshly cooked food for affordable price.


This is one of such places, New Sum Ye （新心意）in the Arcadian Centre, China Town. It mainly caters for take-away, but there are also some tables for people to eat in.

During the lunch time it offers main dish + drink + dessert for £4.99. These are the food we had the other day.



This is Dim's Chicken roast and duck roast on rice. He said there were many bones and it was difficult to eat, but, as you see, there was a quite lot of meat, too.

On the dish there were some boiled Chinese cabbage and pickled ginger. He was kept on complaining about it, as he hates ginger. This even after I removed it and put it in my dish. What a guy .



This is my dish: Noodles in soup with wanton. Wantons were a bit smelly, presumably because of not-very-fresh prawns or not-the-best-quality meat, but the soup and noodles were more than ok.

They even offer chili oil and vinegar at our disposal. This is quite unusual in Birmingham.

While we were eating here, there were eating also a group of Muslim Asians, a Black family, a Chinese guy and 1 white couple. Great ethnic mixture of customers.

We went to a newly opened Persian restaurant near our house. These are the photos of the food we ate there.

For starter we had a naan panir sabzi to share. It was exactly what it said: 1 naan, feta cheese, and raw herbs.

The feta, however, was very diffrent from the usual Greek fata. It was more watery and REALLY salty. We asked our waiter where it came from. He said it was imported from Iran, and we could find it in Persian groceries. Regardless of its saltiness, this feta was very tasty. It just melted in the mouth leaving behind creamy milky flavour. Bread was big and herbs were plenty: very good value for £2.50.

These are the main courses.


Dim chose Kabab-e-Chenjeh (“Grilled chunks fillets of tender lamb with grilled tomatoes, served with fresh naan or saffron steamed rice”) from grill section, and I went for Zereshk polo ba morgh (“Steamed saffron rice with sour barberries, almonds and pistachio, served with cooked chicken”) from traditional dish section, £7 and £5 respectively.

Kebab meat was bit too cooked for me, but Dim likes his meat well-done, so it was ok. He thought the meat was marinated in something he did not like, but I could not detect it. One skewer of lamb was served with a mound of rice, herb salad, two pieces of grilled tomatoes, and purple sour pickles. I liked very much this pickles; they were very similar to Japanese a type of Japanese pickled called "Shibazuke".

My main was the rice served with chicken, not the chicken served with rice. In fact it came as a large mound of rice on one dinner plate, and one large chicken thigh cooked in red sauce, served in gratin dish. The rice (Zareshk Polo) was Persian white and yellow saffron rice, plus some nuts bits (I did not see pistachio) and sweet dried berries on top. Well presented and tasty, if rather sweet. Chicken was cooked with slices of carrot, tomato sauce, and probably with sumac. It would have been better, if they had used better quality chicken, but it was acceptable for the price.

They offer also rather interesting Persian sweets, but we were too full to try. The bill came to £15.30 for the items above plus one can of coke. Good value. If you are interested, you can find the address and phone number here.

http://www.birminghamplus.com/items/items.asp?iid=2603&item