Itsu

I am a bit obsessed with this place! This is a great place for a quick, heathy, fresh on-​the-​go meal. I love their Detox miso soup and the green shake. Yummy!

Well, that was Itsu. The menu has changed, the portions are smaller and they’ve completely lost the plot. I don’t like sitting in a place eating out of a paper cup missing how it was in the beginning.

Yum! That’s about it. I arrived in London after a 4 hour delay to my place near Trafalgar Square. Then I went to the Eye to do my first tourist thing… but they closed it down… after a round about walk back I was exhausted and just wanted to get food to bring to the room.
So happy with my miso soup and this chicken and rice with pomegranates an spinach… or something like that. Really tasty and felt super healthy, which I try to be… if I lived there I’d probably get food there a lot!

I’ve been working around Covent Garden a lot recently and each time I’ve tried to step out of my comfort zone and try somewhere new to eat on my break, this time it was Itsu. I can’t remember if this was my first time trying an Itsu, (take from that what you will), but I enjoyed it never the less.
I was eating with my younger, fitter and faster-​metabolism-​ed friend Will, who ordered 2 separate pots of goodness; a soup with an egg dropped in it (?) and a chicken teriyaki pot with rice. Following his lead, I doubled up on the portions.
I ordered a chicken Jaipur; a curried chicken soup full of flavour, and a Thai duck rice pot; bursting with ginger, coriander and edamame. I really enjoyed both, and ended up pouring the dregs of my soup into the last of my dry rice, like the rebellious wild-​child I am.
2 portions left me satisfied but not bloated so I’d recommend doubling up to folks with a bigger appetite.
The décor was clean and modern with ample seating split between two levels.
The staff took their sweet time to serve us, which is a little bit irksome when you don’t have much time to eat on a 7pm ‘lunch break’, but when we were served, the food arrived quickly.
Not a bad experience at all.

I literally just came here to try the frozen yogurt coz I’d always been curious. I got it with honey cashews and it was a bargain price of £2.99 for a pretty big portion! I was a healthy happy bunny!

Fresh food and they have good variance of rice and noodle soup. I’m gonna get the sushi and sashimi box for next time.

I love going to your typical mom and pop shop but occasionally I do appreciate having a high street chain every now and again. This branch is usually really busy at lunch and there’s a fair amount of seating upstairs if you do want to take a quick lunch break or even a pre-​theatre meal.
The sushi isn’t that great and would prefer going to Wasabi instead but I really do like some of the rice and noodle potsu. Nice hearty meals that feel quite healthy. Lately I really like the salad or sandwich options — the duck and pomegranate is real good as well as the salmon one. They’re surprisingly really filling and relatively low cal.

Very good !
Love the choice of food here !
And especially love the «no mayo» thing cause I dislike mayo.
Also love the way it shows calories in the dishes.
The food seem very healthy and it was really tasty !!
And the prices are very good too :)

The food was ok. I don’t like Mitso Soup and that was the base liquid for most of their menu. Portion sizes were abundant.

Man, I really should have read the Unilocal reviews before coming here. The service is grand — very friendly man at the till who charged me takeaway price instead of dine in. The restaurant set up itself isn’t bad. But the sushi is god-​awful. I ate a little just because I was so hungry and I normally love sushi. Not good for food. :(

If you want dumplings, you have to have vegetarian ones in soup. Friendly staff!

Right, if this rating was all about service I would give 5 stars. Staff are unbelievably fast at the till, and one member stocked me up to the gills on the love of my life. Pickled ginger. For this man alone the rating is what it is.
Seating upstairs (limited) helps for those wanting to grab a seat outside of the rain.
As to the food? Meh. The rice was cold, the fish was hot (I have no idea how this happened, but I assume the broken fridge was not a good idea with raw ingredients), the seaweed had an odd flavour, as well as a few other picky moments for myself.
Not the best, but I am yet to get food poisoning.

Don’t have a ton of experience here but the one time I went with co-​workers I was impressed with how fresh everything was. I would not have minded if it were a bit less expensive but this is London and on the Strand at that so you have to bear that in mind.

The inevitable day has come, my beloved Itsu usually so reliable has finally failed me. I need a tissue to cry in, and a new lunch spot for those days when I can’t hack my boring home made salads.
I ordered the vegetable dynamite detox soup, which normally tastes so delicious (in a salt heavy way that doesn’t quite fit with Itsu’s slogan of ‘Health and Happiness’). This time my old faithful soup didn’t taste quite right and not actually very good at all. Something was off, and normally these soups taste identical wherever you order them. I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Each soup doesn’t have taste the same right? And perhaps a bit of diversity should be allowed our homogenised chain store world. I added a dash of soy and spices to cover the taste and delved in.
After eating a bunch of veg, I fished out with my chopsticks a lump of charred blackened meat from my vegetable (non-​meat) soup. I was told by a member of staff that it was chicken, but seriously if that was what the chicken is meant to look like please don’t order it. The aforementioned lump looked disgusting and a very unhealthy grey colour with blackened grilled bits. I half expected to get food poisoning from soup but so far all is well. The lady serving apologised nicely. I would have pushed my complaint further but was in a rush so just asked for my money back which she duly gave.
This is a new Itsu that opened up a month ago as part of Julian Metcalfe (founder of Pret a Manger) rapidly growing empire of Japanese-​esque fast sushi restaurants. Upstairs is quite pleasant and they have surprisingly quite a lot of seating for central London. In the evening they bring you your hot food orders in real bowls but obviously they add additions like 50 times reboiled chicken for free. I would have frequented this place, but this incident has seriously put me off one of my favourite cheap and quick lunch spots for a while…