Sticks’n’Sushi is one of Cara’s favourite destinations for sushi in London. It’s her comfort spot as she knows regardless of the location the menu items will be exactly the same.
Sticks’n’Sushi menu, quality, presentation, portions and ratio of rice to filling in sushi is consistent and that is a positive thing. You always know what you are getting and that’s good on those days when you simply just don’t fancy experimenting with a new restaurant experience.
As the name suggests the speciality of the restaurant is sushi and the yakitori grilled sticks. These are offered as a la carte as well as part of the pre selected tasting menus.
Those latter menus are great when you want to try a bit of everything, but you can’t decide what to pick.
So they do it for you. We had Carpe Diem to try, along with a very reasonably priced French rose at £39. It was a cold evening so it just didn’t feel right to have a white. And Esprit Mediteranee paired nicely with our dishes.
Carpe Diem contains a total of 12 dishes, which might sound like a lot but they’re actually perfect to satisfy whilst leaving tiny bit of space for desserts. We start with mini tuna tartar on a crispy bread, quality fresh deep red tuna.
And a little side dish of grilled broccoli, as you oughta eat your greens. I enjoy broccoli’s flavour on its own, especially steamed with pink salt and extra virgin olive oil, but for anyone who doesn’t, like my guest, there is a sweet and spicy toasted sesame sauce – Goma, which compliments it beautifully.
The sauce goes well and to my surprise even my non broccoli eating guest is helping himself to quite a few of the florets.
Part of the Carpe Diem menu is also a selection of four varieties of sushi rolls. They look all very bright and vibrant, our top favourite is Hell’s Kitchen and Ebi Panko.
You can’t fault the sushi, it has a thinner layer of sticky rice with a more generous filling. Some sushi places are guilty of overdoing it with the rice.
Hell’s Kitchen is crisp with a meaty jumbo prawn tempura wrapped in rice and fresh tuna slices plus a dot of spice. While the Ebi Panko is similar but instead folded into thin avocado slices.
Another advantage of these menus is equal amount of slices and rolls, eliminating that sharing struggle over the last piece on the plate. The menus range from one to four people, with an option to add more diners so the chefs can prepare exact ratio for each guest.
For yakitori it’s a selection of three, one of each of course. My favourite – Hotate Bacon is a miso herb butter scallop wrapped in bacon.
Juicy and sweet, for me personally just the scallops would suffice, I like quality scallops on their own but bacon seems to be a popular accompaniment for this shellfish in many dining establishments.
My guest particular likes the cured ham wrapped goats cheese under the name of Yaki Yagi. It’s a rich dish with meaty texture, a little crispy edged even and an oozing creamy middle.
Very goaty too, on both the tongue and nose. We could smell goats cheese as soon as the plate landed on our table.
The Carpe Diem is very reasonably priced too at £93, you get both cold and hot dishes and, as I mentioned before, it leaves enough space for something sweet.
Karameru for my guest which is two types of creative-looking ice cream sticks with well paired toppings sourdough with miso caramel, hazelnut nougatine and dark chocolate. And vanilla ice cream with white chocolate sauce & white chocolate cookie crumble.
Relatively easy to make but so satisfying, it ticks off all the boxes at the flavour and texture levels: something cold and refreshing, plus crunchy and gooey.
While mine is Goma, it’s possibly not everyone’s cup of tea but if you like sesame you’ll absolutely fall head over heels in love with it.
It’s vanilla ice cream topped with sesame tuile – baked thin wafer with French origin, I didn’t know its official name.
It’s served on a bed of black sesame custard, resembling halva. You might be familiar with halva – a confectionary made from ground seeds often sunflower or sesame, and sugar, very popular in the Middle East and in South Asia.
It’s thick and rich in sesame flavour with cooling creamy ice cream and the crunch from tuile and sesame nougatine. Sticks’n’Sushi is now my new destination for a dessert too.
With eleven restaurants in London there bound to be a Sticks n Sushi near by, so when you fancy quality sushi be sure to pop in.