Akari

Akari is a Japanese bar and restaurant in Islington, London N1, offering authentic Japanese cuisine such as sushi, sashimi and wide range of sake and shochu.

灯 Akari | Japanese Kitchen & Bar

Our food is freshly cooked everyday.

Try our delicious authentic Japanese food in a nice and cosy English pub-style restaurant.

All our sushi and sashimi is fresh and prepared daily with quality ingredients.

Find your favourite from a variety of our finest sushi & sashimi selections.

Chu-hi (Japanese Spirits Cocktail) and Umeshu (Plum Wine) are also worth a try.

http://www.akarilondon.co.uk

Akari Essex Road Japanese restaurant review - more than just a ...

Akari, which is at the intersection of Essex Road and New North Road, is some distance from Angel where the main action is.

We were, however, delighted to find out that Akari has a full size menu with a whole section on sushi and another on mains.

We liked Akari's cheesecake (£4.20) quite a bit though.

Compact, not overly sweet or creamy, Akari's cheesecake was the subtle Japanese adaptation to the New York version.

Akari Essex Road Japanese restaurant review - more than just a izakaya

#OGR: Chirashi at Akari – Rocket & Squash

Some would argue the One Good Reason to eat at Akari, midway up Islington’s Essex Road, is that you can get 3 really pretty good hand rolls for £8.50.

But I think the One Good Reason to pull up a chair at Akari is their bara chirashi: a bowl of just warm sushi rice, with a fairly generous topping of sashimi offcuts – usually salmon, scallops, sea bass, tuna, yellow tail and a little bit of squid.

Now chirashi is always a reasonable option if you’re looking for an unrefined raw fish and rice fix.

Akari’s is a notch up from others that I’ve had though, and given that their sushi rolls are perfectly good, it’s a genuine complement that the chirashi is something worth having instead.

It’s well balanced: salmon roe, a chiffonade of shiso (no idea what the Japanese for ‘finely cut herbs’ is) and bits and pieces of nori season the dish, make it more than rice with raw fish.

Grace Dent reviews Sosharu: The best chicken karaage in London ...

After Kurobuta, Flesh & Buns, Akari and several others, Atherton certainly isn’t the first person to spring the Japanese izakaya experience on the city.

Wonkily speaking, izakaya is sort of a Japanese gastropub.

They serve sashimi, yakatori and other small fried things and are a haven for post-work whiskey guzzlers and gossipers.

The end of Lost in Translation makes me cry every time over confusing, half-hewn memories of lovely things now past.

To confound izakaya matters more, Sosharu is not about chucked-together meats and raw fish.