Nobu, Crown Southbank

So where did Gaz decide to bring me for my birthday? Nobu! My manager at work thought I was going to No Bull Restaurant when I first told him. Nobull turned out pretty good but a noisy dining experience.

When we got to the restaurant, we were escorted downstairs (ground level bar) and the rest of the staff shouted the usual welcomes in Japanese. That's OK, as long as I understood the menu it's fine.

I couldn't believe how noisy it was with the lack of sound control and how close the tables were situated from each other. I could lean over and picked a bite out of the next table's nice looking cod fish dinner if I was feeling up to it. But perhaps it was what the restaurant aspired to be - a contemporary American restaurant with a Japanese twist. Or was it the other way round?

Gaz ordered the warm sake $18 and I had water.


We ordered tacos $18 - which was a mix of lobster, prawn, raw king fish and raw salmon (from left to right) accompanied with tomato salsa. The salsa was a little too acidic for Gaz but he finished it all anyway.


Of course we had to order the signature the cod with miso dish $43. The two sticks of red coloured stalks are pickled ginger. I don't like pickled ginger very much, but I disliked this one even more as it was very sour. It was meant to cleanse the palette so I didn't complain. The cod as usual, melts in the mouth.

Next came this very small but delicious duck hot pot with green tea soba. The duck was absolutely DEElicious! Such a nice delicate sweet flavour to it. It looked like bacon too, my fave in the world! The duck was nicely cooked, sweet and smoky, just perfect!

I had to have my fill of deep fried food so I ordered the tempura dinner $25. 4 pieces of the longest prawns and 7 pieces of veges which included sweet potatoes, onion, zuchinni etc. It came with a bowl of rice, our only carb for the night. When the lady brought the tempura to our table, I asked her for the accompanying bowl of rice to which she misheard and told me enthusiastically that the tempura was very nice!


We read lots of bad reviews of waiters being terrible etc, but we had no such problems that night. Our waiter was very attentive and he remembered our orders even when we ourselves have forgotten what else was to come next!

But don't tell Nobull though... we were walking back to the car and wasn't feeling very full so decided to have a savoury dessert from rival Colonel Sander's 11 Secret Recipes Wicked Wings.