Rian and I were invited to Kanada-Ya Upper Street this weekend to check out their new kids menu. As Kanada-Ya is an authentic Japanese Ramen restaurant I was interested to see how they might tone down the flavours for a child’s palate. I mean, I love ramen – but it’s always been rather spicy!
The restaurant itself is open plan formica table cafe style with a kitchen at the back which you can observe as you wait for service – Rian was intrigued by the enormous slicing machine!
The kids menu is super simple – two choices of ramen, and two ‘smaller’ plate choices plus a juice.
We went for the Mini Chicken Paitan Ramen and the Chicken Karaage. Rian was slightly dubious when it arrived – he’s not really one for soup or broth, he’s never actually eaten it come to think of it – but he’s nothing if not a trier, and he was pretty pleased.
He especially enjoyed playing with the noodles…
He liked all the vegetables in his ramen, and they left the seaweed as a single sheet on the side rather than shredding it. I think nori might be a few steps down the line! He didn’t really want to try the chicken karaage, because he has an extremely wobbly front tooth and is wary of biting anything – so I ate it. Delicious, crunchy yum. I’d go back just for a plate of that.
For my meal I had Aburi Chasu (pork belly) and Abura Soba, which is a brothless ramen (yes I know, I can’t think of a better explanation!) which had thick noodles, more pork belly, garlic, ginger, spring onion and a brilliantly soft and runny onsen egg which – after being poked by Rian wielding a chopstick – served very well as a sauce.
It was all lovely and really reasonably priced – we didn’t pay in exchange for this review – but if I had been paying it would have come to about £22 all in. There was also the added bonus of the colouring in on the back of the kids menu – I got to finish my meal at leisure rather than scoffing it down because Rian had finished first and was antsy. Both happy!
There are three Kanada-Ya branches in London, but the Upper Street one is the first one to have this children’s menu and it looks popular already – there were lots of littles in the restaurant tucking in very happily!
**Disclaimer: We were invited to review the new Kanada-Ya kids menu and we did not pay for our meal. All opinions and views are my own as always**
