Sakura Japanese Restaurant
82 Botanic Avenue,
Belfast,
BT7 1JR
028 9043 9590
www.sakurabelfast.com
NOT many customer service experiences remain in my memory two decades after the fact but one that does still pops into my head every time I pass down Botanic Avenue in Belfast. Back in my student days, myself and a friend went on a much-need donut run to feed a waiting house back in the Holylands. Yes, we really were that rock and roll.
Although, to be fair, in the late 90s the area hadn’t yet fully blossomed into the Armageddon of 100-strong queues waiting for the off-licence to open you see this time of year. Hail glorious St Patrick, indeed.
Anyway, back to Botanic. On requesting a dozen deep-fried treats – it might have been 15 – the two of us were asked, deadpan as you like: “Are these sit-in or take away?”
Too shocked to be offended, one of us mumbled “Take away” before heading back to the house in semi-stunned semi-silence.
Back then, the presence of an American donut chain on Botanic Avenue was pretty exotic. It didn’t last, but even its replacement – Subway – blew our young culinary minds a little. Back then, the street leading up to the back of Queen’s University boasted a couple of Chinese takeaways, an Indian, a chip shop, a kebab place and a few spots that specialised in hangover-absorbing breakfasts.
It still has all that – but 20 years later it’s hard to imagine the breadth of options on Botanic is rivalled by any street of similar length anywhere in Belfast and beyond. Just staying on one side of the street will give you all of the above, as well as Taiwanese, Korean and American barbecue.
If you want to brave the slow-moving traffic there’s Nepalese, Middle Eastern and Italian. Burittos are represented in a traditional Mexican/American form by Boojum on one side and a curry fusion style in Kurrito on the other.
Both east and west banks of Botanic also boast Japanese restaurants, with the longer-established Sakura offering all manner of Asian options as well as sushi and tempura. If all you want is sushi and tempura, you’ll be well served, whether you sit at the counter with its conveyor belt of colour-coded plates – starting at £2.20 apiece – Generation Gaming past, or you settle down at a table which, like the general decor, is all dark wood and inviting, offering some respite from the hubbub outside.
That’s not to say there isn’t enough hubbub to go around inside, with the place pretty busy for a Wednesday afternoon late lunch/early dinner. Until 3pm, there’s a lunch menu which hops around Asia and offers starters including pieces of sushi, dumplings and spare ribs for £2 if ordered along with a £6.95 main of various proteins in various sauces (kimchi, black pepper, curry, that sort of thing).
The dinner menu offers far more, with a potentially dizzying selection of sashimi, sushi, salads, soups, noodles, rice and on and on. It could all be a little overwhelming, so the set meals – one £19.50 for a starter, a main and a dessert with the other a fiver more for a wider selection and an extra starter – will be a welcome inclusion for an apprehensive or simply indecisive diner.
The sushi as part of the £24.50 set offering ranged from perfectly fine prawn and bream to very good tuna to excellent, fat-pinstriped salmon. The seafood miso soup could be forgiven the pieces of never-necessary crabstick, thanks to the perfectly cooked prawn and scallop, savoury broth and iodine-rich seaweed.
The fresh tangle of seaweed salad, with a nutty, sesame hit, also struck the right note, especially in countering the soft-shell crab explosion on the table, with crisp tempura and sushi rolls topped with avocado and crab roe.
A main course of deep-fried sea bass was drenched in a sticky, sweet, hot kimchi sauce, with plenty of the necessary veg and golden-yolked fried rice to mop it up. It was a hefty portion, but that didn’t stop it all disappearing.
The ‘mystery’ ice cream was obviously taking its title seriously, as there wasn’t any in the kitchen, but the coconut version and the orange sorbet were both good without being spectacular, as was the Baileys cheesecake, neither of which would have been considered had one not been included in the set menu.
But no-one will come to Sakura for dessert. Everything else is so good you don’t need to. And they also do take away, just not iced and filled with jam.
THE BILL
Set Meal £24.50
Four pieces of sushi
Seafood miso soup
Deep fried kimchi sea bass
Two scoops of ice cream
Avocado and crab sushi rolls £6.80
Soft shell crab tempura £8.80
Seaweed salad £5.80
Baileys cheesecake £4.50
Shirley temple cocktail £4.50
Cherry orange cocktail £4.50
Coffee x2 £3.60
Total £63
