E-Kagen Sushi & Noodle Bar

Managed to visit E-​Kagen for the second time and thankfully they weren’t busy on a Friday evening. They do take reservations here which is good as a back up.
Service here is quick and friendly however portion sizes are a bit disappointing. The size of the sashimi plates are more of a starter rather than a main. I think it’s because they cut the fish quite small and thin. We also ordered vegetable gyoza which was tasty and not too oily. It was sad to say that we were still hungry and had the vegetable tempura to end our meal which was decent.
I’d love to come back here as the food is good but I don’t think I will be anytime soon.

I have mixed feelings about E-​Kagen. I used to be a huge fan but been slightly disappointed with my experiences the last couple times i went.
Firstly, the food is great. I love their age-​tofu, their kimchi ramen, and their katsu curry with egg. Their ramen is really standout, very fair pricing and fresh.
Their sushi is good quality, some of the best quality you can get in Brighton, but portions are SMALL. If you are hungry or a big eater, be prepared to shell out lots of ££ if you’re there for sushi.
Problems — their weird and ever-​changing opening hours. I feel like they change them all the time! I feel like I can never plan to go there because I’m not sure it will be open.
Service — is friendly, but sporadic. I mean waiting forever to get tap waters, having to ask for share plates and the server being confused, and the last time i went the missed out on one of our mains (mine! :() so i had to wait another 15 mins while everyone else ate.
All the problems being said — I still go back because if I want ramen or sushi, this is still my favourite.

I’m a ramen connoisseur — I admit it. A ramen snob, even. I have traveled great distances for truly great ramen, including to Japan itself, and this is not it. This is not even okay ramen. This is ramen that just makes you feel bad about not having good ramen. I’d sooner go to the market below, buy some Nong Shim, go home and call it a night because at least that is good instant ramen. And sadly, that means there is no good ramen in Brighton. Sorry guys, you’ll have to head up to London for that :(

By now, everybody knows why high end Japanese cuisine is lovely — delicacy, craft, freshness, subtlety — the adjectives come tripping freely from the teased and delighted tongue. E-​Kagen serves the other thing — the big, robust unsubtle Japanese food that fills you up and isn’t nearly so polite about it.
As such, despite being older, it is still among the more exciting places to eat Japanese food in Brighton. Wonderfully cheap, the ramen has punch, depth and comes beaded with soul-​nourishing grease. I’m obsessed with Kimchi and the Kimchi ramen is orientalist soul food: hot, filling, spicy and with half a boiled egg in it. The perfect Sunday breakfast with the second best people watching in North Laine.
Don’t bother with the Sushi — I’m sure it’s fine, but it feels like a necessary addition to a menu forced to court expectations — go for a proper hot meal and leave stuffed and happy.

AMAZING RESTAURANT!
Without a doubt my favourite Japanese restaurant in Brighton.
The waitresses and Chefs are extremely welcoming and friendly!
They have great recommendations, if you’ve not eaten much Japanese food before, and the open kitchen is a treat as well! The portions and sizes are great compared to other nearby Japanese restaurants (yes, I mean Pom Poko and Yo! Sushi). It is also great value for money.
I would definitely, definitely recommend giving this place a try if you haven’t already.
It’s become a house favourite for the past two years!

I have been using Yum Yums’ for years for shopping but I never really felt like trying Sushi upstairs. Big mistake. since having to rethink my dietary intake, (through medical reasons), I have been making an effort.
It has to be said that E Kagen Sushi has made my transition a lot easier.
Excellent but simple food, nice light/​airy and clean environment to eat in.

I have eaten here a couple of times. The food is quite good, the tempura can be a bit greasy but the downfall of the place is the service. When they are a bit busy it can take AGES to get served. The record is about 25 minutes, by which time we left as we were starving and a bit fed up.
That being said it is a good spot for hearty noodle soups and other hot Japanese food. Prices are reasonable and if you get served swiftly that is a great bonus. I would go back but try and turn up a bit early before the rush.

I’m a big fan of Japan and whenever I come to eat here I feel like I get a little taste of what it would be like to visit the country. It’s set up like a canteen and they have a lot of tables. You order your meal from the cook line and also collect your cutlery/​chop sticks also.
I always keep my order simple here and go for a big noodle bowl. You will see your food being cooked as you wait and this means that the whole noodle bar always has a pleasant smell of spices. The food is the same as what you can buy from the supermarket downstairs and this makes the noodle bar a good place to come to if you want some ideas.
Prices are reasonable and you may pay about £6−7 for a noodle bowl, but you get a massive portion for your money. Generally, the bar is open during the daytime, making it a good place for a shopping lunch break. On Friday and Saturday it stays open later and you will find it busier then.
I am definitely a fan of the noodle bar and would certainly recommend it for anyone wanting a Japanese meal in between take away and restaurant rates.

this is probably one of my favourite places to eat. it’s nothing fancy, but simply good and honest food that you can’t seem to get bored of.
the staff are so friendly and make you feel right at home. even the chef welcomes and sees you off.
the restaurant hosts an open– plan kitchen, which is a nice touch as you can see your food being prepared from scratch.
for £1, you can bring your own alcohol, which kind of reminds me of being at your own dinner party, except without the hassle of making your own food.
the prices are really good for what you pay for and the food is delicious. i have not had a disappointing meal here before. it is just an amazing find and much much better than all of the other japanese restaurants i have been to.
if you are looking for authentic japanese cuisine minus the pretentious fancies and over-​inflated prices, this is the place to be. wagamamas it is not.

Above the Yum Yums oriental food market is a Sushi and noodle café that serves traditional Japanese food. It’s a large room filled with tables and hanging lanterns. There’s a large open kitchen that takes up the entire length of the café, you can see the food coming and can only take around 10 minutes. There’s a huge menu that contain multiple vegetarian and noodle dishes. I had the Yaki Soba just recently and although the food was good, it was £8 which I found quite expensive. It was much greasier than anything I’d had from there before or from other Japanese resturants. The specials are really good though, especially the Special Sushi which is fundamentally the Yellowtail sushi.

E-​Kagen is a good honest canteen style restaurant offering cheap, authentic, delicious japanese food. Most mains will come to about £5 with sushi dishes and smaller starters at between £3-£4 and puddings at around £2-£3.
Usually the place is quiet, on account of its being on the 1^st floor, above Yum Yum Oriental Supermarket, and only having a small entrance, rather than a street-​level storefront. But, once you’ve navigated your way through the surprisingly long and twisting corridor up from the street, the room is pleasantly open, with a few rows of tables, an open kitchen behind the bar at one side, and a window the length of the room overlooking sydney street.
It’s a great place to stop in for lunch if you’re shopping, or maybe an early evening meal on your way back from town. The food is extremely authentic, the staff are nice, and happy to talk you through anything on the menu if you can’t decide what to go for.
They’ve also got a nice little selection of puddings, some of which involve sweet red beans, which I’d never heard of, and so had to choose. They turned out to be strangely delicious, and I’m thinking of going back for some now.
All in all, the quality of the food is not outstanding, but it is a bargain, and consistently nice, and the restaurant itself is lovely.

Friendly staff & tasty food at good prices with a good view of The Laines. I eat here all the time when in Brighton & that is saying a lot in this town!

I should correct this. I’ve been calling this place Yum Yum’s restaurant for ages (and will continue to do so) although it’s officially above the Yum Yum’s store and officially called E Kagen Sushi & Noodle Bar.
It’s my favourite restaurant in Brighton. Yum Yum’s to my knowledge, and to most of Qype’s, the internet’s, and all of my Japanese-​hungry friends’ knowledge, is fantastic. It serves reasonably priced authentic Japanese food cooked in an unpretentious open kitchen. The food is amazing, with a great selection of Sushi and Sashimi (two Sushi-​obsessed friends can most definitely vouch for this) — and it’s not just fish products that make it great.
My personal favourites are vegetable Gyozas I could eat all day (and have had valiant attempts to re-​create with a Wagamamas Cookbook at home to some success), and a lovely rustic vegetarian Soba Noodle dish, and with an extensive menu it’s to die for — although the photos on it don’t do it justice. Dine for starter and main around £10 depending on what you pick, it’s brilliant for lunch and dinner — although shut between 4pm and 6pm. If you’re going for lunch they do a fantastically cheap (hello students) set menu, which my friends leap on.
Find the restaurant above the Yum Yum oriental shop in the North Laines on Sydney Street (a brilliant source of Japanese cookery type things — the source of Gyoza skins, which made me very very happy), via the door to the right of the shop. It’s an overlooked place that whilst not short of business is rarely crowded. It’s cosy (but not too small — actually the inside is surprising and not what you expect from looking from outside), fantastic, and somewhere I keep meaning to take my parents to introduce them to Japanese food. It’s a good place to investigate it, and won’t let you down.
I suppose you could say I like it just a little bit. Hidden gem, no doubt.

I love E-​Kagen so much! I’ve eaten here loads and I never get bored of it. It is far and away the best Japanese food in Brighton, in terms of both value for money and deliciousness.
The menu offers something for everyone: ‘tapas’ type dishes that are also starters (spare ribs, deep-​fried marinaded tofu, that sort of thing), sushi (gorgeously fresh and very good), soups (ramen to die for as well as udon and soba soups), fried noodles and so on. The lunchtime set menus are particularly good value, offering a very hearty portion of katsu (deep fried cutlet of chicken or pork) or prawn and asparagus, for instance, with an equally hearty portion of rice and deliciously dressed salad, with an accompanying miso soup. They also have plenty of Vegetarian options. All for quite a lot less than a tenner.
They have an extended menu in the evenings which I haven’t tried because I have little kids and never get out, but it looks good. You can also BYO (as they don’t serve any alcohol) for a very small corkage (£1 per head I think). Conveniently there is an offie round the corner on Trafalgar Street.
They are always lovely to my kids when I bring them in and my kids absolutely adore the food here. We always go there after colds and illnesses because the food is almost magically restorative.
The décor is very simple canteen style. They fairly recently replaced the old formaica tables with wooden ones (I kind of liked the formaica!) but it is anything but pretentious. In fact it looks a bit dodgy on first viewing and doesn’t do much to advertise the quality of the food. Overlook that and you’ll have a really good meal.
When it’s busy the food can take a while because it’s all made fresh by one man. It is worth waiting for. Accept no imitations. Like it has been said before, why go to Wagamammas when you get better for less round the corner? Wagamamma Shmagamamma!

Our favourite restaurant in Brighton. It’s located above the Yum Yum oriental supermarket and on first appearances does not appear too promising. There is basically just one big room with big windows overlooking Sydney Street (great for people watching) and an open kitchen down the side. But it is the welcome and the food that truly set it apart. In the daytime, the owners run it themselves (he cooks, she serves the tables) and it is amazing that they can serve up such exquisite and authentic Japanese food to a full restaurant between them. The portions are large and good value. Particularly good are the noodle soups — the tempura soba is amazing, with beautifully light batter and moreish subtly flavoured soup. The gyoza are homemade and delicious, and the sushi selection is small but superb. All in all it knocks spots off nearby Wagamama’s: much better, more authentic food for much less. A hidden gem.