Ippudo

Posted on 2015/01/25 15:37:45 (January 2015).

[Saturday 17th January 2015]
Chie was in the mood for ramen today, and we decided to try out Ippudo, the London branch of the ramen chain which, although originating in Japan, is probably most famous for their branch in New York. It did rather feel like an American dining experience, particularly with the rather overly enthusiastic attempts by all the non-Japanese staff to rather unconvincingly throw tidbits of Japanese into their presumably scripted service, but I suppose they were at least making an effort. I have to admit the ramen were actually pretty good - excitingly there was a choice of three vegetarian options and at least the one I went for didn't have the slightest hint of words like "natural" or "healthy" in the description, as sadly seems to be the case at a lot of the other ramen places in London. Instead it was a delightfully gutsy experience, very strongly flavoured, and a real assault to the senses.

After lunch, we went to John Lewis for a bit, and also stopped off for a coffee in an odd little cafe in the corner of a clothes shop on Wigmore Street whilst Erika was having her afternoon nap. We would probably have just headed home after that, but received an email from the upstairs neighbours of the new flat that apparently the builders had been smoking in our flat again (particularly noticeable this time as the ceiling in our flat was currently partially removed). This made me rather cross, having already raised this issue once - so we got on the tube and headed straight up to the new flat, where I had words with the builders directly. On the plus side we got to see that the partition wall had now been fully removed and also Chie and Erika had a chance to meet the upstairs neighbours for the first time - albeit very briefly.

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