Jin Kichi

Jin Kichi
73 Heath Street
NW3 6UG
Tel: 020 7794 6158
http://www.jinkichi.com

Date of Last Visit: 4 October 2008

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £25

The Background: I spent most of Saturday morning working on my sorely neglected blog. I got sucked into a big black hole. Hours, we're talking. Hours. And what do I have to show for it? Now you can see links to Delicious and Digg after each of my posts. (You may have noticed some other changes too a week or two ago...Inspired by fellow London food blogger Silverbrow, I signed up for Typepad's Blog Services.)

So I needed to get out of the house. And more than anything, this London restaurant blogger needed a manicure. Typing and surfing. I tell ya.

I also, not surprisingly, needed lunch. So I headed north. And ran into Bryan and Stacey and friends on the way. They were heading to Borough and although sorely tempted, I had places to go, people to meet! Nails to get done.

The Entrance: I head up to Hampstead for lunch at Jin Kichi, a Japanese restaurant that I had read about previously on various Web sites. And conveniently, it's located right across the street from California Nails.

Happy, very happy, shouts greet me as I enter and I wish I hadn't totally blanked out on all the Japanese I picked up in Tokyo. I am given a seat at the sushi bar, which isn't really a sushi bar. It's a yakitori bar. Behind the counter, a gentleman is grilling what I can only guess are livers. On a real grill. Cool.

I skip the yakitori, which might be a mistake. But I just want some spinach. And some tempura. And a spicy tuna roll. So I have all that, watching the yakitori show the whole time. Service is sweet and apologetic. At one point, they tell me that the chef is very very busy and it will be about 10 minutes for my spicy tuna roll. This is the first time a member of waitstaff has every proactively notified me that they're running a bit behind. Normally when this happens, they try to avoid eye contact.

The Verdict: I liked it here. I thought my food was average. Nothing super exciting. But I still liked it.

P.S. Don't forget...blog about Your Perfect Day in London by the end of October. I'll summarize all the blog posts for all to publish on their blogs as a traffic-building exercise...