Sushi Ga Ga

Off the side of chinatown, and it’s relatively new, it stands in the same place Okawari used to be. Okawari was a japanese restaurant who was famed because of their massive portions and it was usually bustling with queues outside.
Today stands Sushi Gaga, a shadow of its predescessor. We arrived at noon and we were the first customers and we stayed for an hour and half and in that time, only two customers walked in. The service was alot to be desired, and the food portions were tiny. We ordered a sushi platter and the maguro/​tuna was meagre. It came with 8 pieces of nigiri for £14. We also ordered agedashi tofu which was the highlight of the meal and potstickers which were clearly bought from frozen. they didn’t have any proper gyoza’s left so we were left with chicken potstickers which don’t have the same taste, it wasn’t bad though. Our bill was over twenty quid. and it wasn’t worth it. It was a good thing that my friend and I were not that hungry because although we didn’t leave with bellie rumbling, that meal was not worth that much.
I miss Okawari and it’s massive portions.

Excellent lunchtime stop. Reasonable pricing and great fresh sashimi. I will be returning.

I am totally gaga for Sushi Gaga (and no not they lady gaga kind). I was impressed with the modern décor and big ”pot hole” style tables which you had to climb over to sit. I was slightly confused with the MTV art work and TV on displays, not sure if they’re sponsored by MTV?
Me and my sister popped in for dinner. The waitress who served us was very polite and courteous! I ordered a few maki rolls and my sister ordered tempura ALL MADE TO PERFECTION however they could increase the portion size of the tempura. After managing to yob down maki rolls, tempura and Japanese beef curry, we was satisfied. I would definitely visit Sushi Gaga again!
(please note: toilets are not accessible to wheelchairs)

I didn’t expect to like Sushi Ga Ga at all, but I really did. More than anything, I just thought it was a fun place to eat some interesting food.
Yummies here include Wagu Beef sashimi, Wagu nigiri, butter-​like yellowtail sashimi and ebi siu mai (prawn dumplings). I especially like the wasabi prawns, delightfully presented with a light tempura coat, a vibrant swab of wasabi mayo and dangling from sticks on a thick cutting board. A whole lot better than I ever would have imagined, I have to admit the Spaghetti Ga Ga (fresh ramen cooked with minced wagu beef tomato sauce) is one of the most moreish dishes I’ve had in a long time.
Best with a group of foodie friends to ensure an adventurous romp of the menu, Sushi Ga Ga offers amusingly tasty dishes in a manner that seems to buck tradition and cast aside worries about blending upscale with downmarket or sophistication with broad appeal.

Okawari in Chinatown has been replaced by a new, shiny Japanese restaurant with the (from an Austrian perspective) very unfortunate name Ga Ga Sushi. To be fair, Okawari desperately needed a makeover and it really worked out very well.
Albeit maybe slightly pricier than Okawari, it is definitely more stylish, the food is better, the portions more than generous and nicely presented and the personnel is incredibly friendly.
We went there for a quick pre-​theatre dinner and were perfectly happy (I would in fact highly recommend Ga Ga Sushi for West end pre-​theatre). I apologise in my chaotic ways I have lost the restaurant bill and they don’t seem to have a website yet, therefore I will have to estimate the prices, my memory is gone.
To combat the worst hunger we started with a good portion of Edamame beans (3.50). This was followed by some maki: the spicy tuna ones (4?) were nice but not spicy and for the eel avocado maki (5?) they could have been a bit more generous with the eel but apart from these minor things both were really very tasty.
We felt like more fish and rice and went for the donburi with tuna sashimi (Tekka Don) (9?), nicely cooked rice topped with loads of fresh tuna which melted in the mouth. It came with a portion of very pleasant soba soup on the side.
The best dish though I thought was the nasu dengaku (5.50?) grilled aubergine with miso the lovely sweet taste of the miso with the soft aubergine, delicious.
Unfortunately, in all of their renovation attempts, they forgot to redo the toilets (if you have ever been to the loo at Okawari you will know that that is not good).
Ga Ga Sushi is still too new to reach a definitive conclusion about it, it could go either way I suppose, but I will give a cautious green light and hope they will keep their standard up (and (please!) redo the loos).

So. This is Sushi Ga Ga, the somewhat controversial new opening in Chinatown; a breezy little Japanese restaurant run by not-​Japanese people and well, serving (with a glance at the odd blog and review published thus far) what can only be quantified as reasonably questionable food.
Having been invited for dinner by Sushi Ga Ga last week, my dinner date came hot on the heels of a much less positive review and somewhere along the line of deliberating whether I should go at all, I totally forgot that I was deliberating about whether I should go and before I knew it it was 7pm and d’oh, time to go for dinner.
I arrived to a queue at Sushi Ga Ga (predictably, everyone loves the new shiny toy) and when I advised I had a reservation, the manager promptly introduced herself and ushered me ahead of the queue and into the restaurant. Oooh, we do thrive on what little blog-​fame we can get.
A glance at the menu showed that they had the standard fare of what you’d expect from most Japanese restaurants ~ small dishes, sushi, sashimi, hand rolls, hot dishes and donburis.
We started with the dream team platter, a selection of nigiri sushi and fresh sashimi and what I loved was that they didn’t have mackerel because mackerel? Eeeewww. The rest of the platter was perfectly fine no gushing and no complaints.
Next up were the wasabi prawns which, served on poppy-​tall stand-​up skewers, are exactly what lollipops would look like in my heaven. Big, fat king prawns coated and fried in a light batter, topped with a delightfully balanced wasabi mayonnaise and crushed pistachio nuts.
Really, what’s not to like?
Following the skewerificness of the wasabi prawns, we had the crispy duck salad which a) came with a whole lot more duck meat than I expected, and b) had mango and greens and all the usual suspects but c) just tasted odd to me, and given that I have no formal training in eating or writing, odd is the best description you’re going to get, sorry.
At this point, my opinion of Sushi Ga Ga was still perching ever so precariously on a knife-​edged fence and anything reminiscent of a breeze in a windowless room would have tipped me either way. I sat and drank my tea and waited patiently for that breeze.
And the breeze came. It came in the form of two final hot dishes ~ salmon teriyake (I so badly wanted to order the miso black cod but had read damning reviews on the dish) and oyako don (chicken and egg on rice).
The salmon was perfectly cooked, the skin charred and black and crispy the way I like. In an interesting and possibly risky manœuvre, they served the salmon with poached pear. Weird? Yes. Tasty? Hell YES.
The oyako don was also a winner, though Panu found it a little sweet. Generous serves of chicken and egg layered atop a bowl of steaming rice there ain’t nothing worse than not having enough topping for your rice but we didn’t even come close here. Win!
So all in all I enjoyed my Sushi Ga Ga dinner with a few hits and a few less misses. Let’s be honest here though, this ain’t no Sushi of Shiori, but with a name like Ga Ga, did we really expect it to be?

I’m adding a new badge to Unilocal — I’m not only claiming the FTR for Sushi Ga Ga but also the FTE — First To Eat!
2010 is becoming an interesting Unilocaling year and for the first time ever, I became a restaurant’s first paying customer.
Walking down Lisle Street today, I noticed that Okawari had gone and Sushi Ga Ga had taken over its premises. So, I popped in for lunch.
The place has been given a complete makeover and gone quite funky but with a nod to Japanese traditions — most of the seating area looks like tatami area but with a large hole cut beneath the table for legs. This looks great but during my visit, I saw some ladies having difficulty getting in with ahem, dignity!
As I chatted to my waiter, I found out that the owners had recently closed their old place in the City and moved to these premises. It also emerged that I was their first ever customer and they gave me a bowl of complimentary soba noodles in soup.
They do make a great effort with their presentation (see attached photos) — flowers with my chirashi don, for example. I chose an unfamiliar dish to start as is my habit — hiyayakko, which was soft tofu in ice, served with a sweetish dipping sauce mixed with bonito flakes, sesame seeds and grated radish. It was nice though I’m not sure the ice added much to the experience.
I then had the aforementioned chirashi don, which is rice topped with mixed sashimi, which included prawn, salmon, tuna, white fish, crabstick and tofu. There was also black fish roe as well as a sweet powder I’ve not had before but added to the dish. A lovely combination and stunning presentation.
There are some interesting looking chef specials, which I plan to return for.
The place has a good energy even though some of the renovation work downstairs is still being finished and I wish them every success.