Otaku News: Jidori Yakitori Now Open in Covent Garden

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Jidori Yakitori Now Open in Covent Garden

Date: 2018 March 10 16:02

Posted by Joe

London foodies in Dalston will be familiar with Jidori the yakitori restaurant. We've just heard they've opened a second branch in Covent Garden. So if you're out in the West End and fancy some high quality yakitori you should have over to 15 Catherine Street, WC2B 5JZ. Why not give their negima a try?!

They also have a karaoke room for private parties!

Full Story

Press release as follows:

JIDORI

NOW OPEN: Jidori in Covent Garden complete with private karaoke room

The second site from the team behind Jidori, the much-loved yakitori restaurant in Dalston has opened in Covent Garden. As well as bringing the popular Japanese small plates and skewers to central London, the restaurant has a new extended menu and a karaoke room for private parties.

Spread over three floors of a Georgian terrace on Catherine Street in the heart of Theatreland, Jidori seats approximately 50 diners. The design takes inspiration from the vibrant restaurant and bar scene of Tokyo, where the streets are a maze of tiny drinking dens and restaurants split over multiple levels.

Owners Natalie Lee-Joe & Brett Redman have worked with Head Chef Shunta Matsubara to create a number of new dishes inspired by the 'specials board' at Jidori in Dalston, served alongside signature dishes such as the popular Tsukune yakitori (minced chicken with egg yolk) and crowd favourites such as the Katsu curry Scotch egg, Okra-nomiyaki and the celebrated Ginger ice cream with miso caramel and sweet potato crisps.

Examples of new dishes at Covent Garden include:

Tuna belly, shiso & daikon hand roll

Green tea noodles, yuba and kikarage

Quail eggs, housemade kewpie & sansho pepper

Smoked tofu tsukune (vegan)

Grilled onion salad, red shiso & ume dressing

Mussel tamago don

During the day, Jidori provides the perfect pit stop for a donburi rice bowl and some yakitori skewers, whereas the evening service is ideal for larger groups, with Jidori's signature Omakase sharing platters. Groups can hire out entire floors of the restaurant, including the Karaoke room on the lower ground floor which will seat parties of 8 or more people (up to 12) featuring a communal dining table designed exclusively for the restaurant by Artist John Booth.

Working with Lucky Voice to carefully craft a variety of playlists, and with over 8,000 songs available to choose from, the 8-12 seater karaoke room is be a unique spot to hold a party. Guests are offered a family-style set menu including Karaoke starting at £40 per head. Drinks and extra dishes can even be ordered through a wall-mounted iPad, meaning there's no excuse for not taking your turn on the mic.

Owners Natalie Lee-Joe & Brett Redman have created a space with a similar feel to that of Dalston, with clean, wood-accented aesthetics complimented by pastel details. Head Chef Shunta Matsubara oversees the kitchens at both Covent Garden and Dalston, manning the bespoke yakitori grill in a continued collaboration with Kama-Asa Shoten, hundred year old artisanal grill makers from Tokyo.

The new site in Covent Garden also offers an extended drinks menu of artisan sake, craft beers and classic cocktails with a twist. Jidori's summer favourite 'Frozen yuzu margarita & togarashi salt' has also made the journey to central London.

Natalie Lee-Joe comments: "I've been travelling to Japan for years and some of the best memories I've made are with friends on a night out singing karaoke at the top of my lungs while eating and drinking well in to the night. We firmly believe food is always at the heart of a good night out, the space in Covent Garden allows us to bring the fun back into dining with our own karaoke room. Our little spot in Dalston will always be our home and moving into central London allows us to build something more exciting in Covent Garden, it's the right move for us."

Brett Redman comments: "It's amazing to think what our little restaurant in Dalston has achieved in the last two years. I feel we're really doing great things there and we're all looking forward to the move to Covent Garden in 2018 and sharing our food with an even greater number of people."

Jidori opens on Catherine Street, Covent Garden on Tuesday 27th February. Please note, the restaurant will only be open for dinner Tuesday to Saturday until early March.

Reservations can be made at jidori.co.uk/reservations or by calling 0207 686 5634.

Jidori

15 Catherine Street

London

WC2B 5JZ

www.jidori.co.uk

Follow @JidoriUK on Instagram and Twitter

About Jidori

In 2006 Brett Redman opened his first restaurant. Set up in a little disused shop on Bethnal Green road, Elliot's served locally sourced and seasonal dishes improvised around the best possible ingredients available each day.

This was before every restaurant in town was serving organic, 'farm-to-table' fare and it became an overnight success: locals loved it and people started travelling from all over London to eat there. Off the back of that success, he opened the Pavilion in Victoria Park in 2007, and then, in 2011 a more developed version of Elliot's in the middle of Borough Market. Using more or less only ingredients sourced from the market suppliers around him, Brett won Elliot's a Michelin Gourmand Bib in its first year and it has continued to hold onto it every year since.

He opened The Richmond, a restaurant and bar at the intersection of Dalston & Hackney, where he developed a contemporary seafood focused menu based around his curiosities as a chef and his on-going commitment to working with ingredients of the highest quality and provenance.

After many years of talking about it and eating and travelling together, Brett worked with long-time friend Natalie Lee-Joe to open Jidori, a yakitori restaurant in Dalston. Together they had always loved the fun, informal nature of Tokyo's yakitori-ya's and izakayas and decided London was missing such a place. Using Brett's experience as a chef cooking great quality produce over wood and charcoal they devised a menu based around using all the parts of a free range Yorkshire chicken and they are now opening a second site in Covent Garden in Feb 2018.

Brett is also opening a modern neighbourhood restaurant with an Oyster bar called Neptune in Bloomsbury as part of the Principal London hotel.

Natalie Lee-Joe has been managing and developing Jidori for the past two years. She led the concept, design and branding work for Jidori based on her combined love of food, culture and design. The concept for Jidori was built and honed over her many trips to Asia, being brought up in Sydney, Australia, where Asian food is abundant and her general love and in-depth knowledge of food, cooking and entertaining. She has travelled extensively through Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, China and the Philippines.

She grew up in a household where food and entertaining were central to the family - spending her summers cooking curries and chutneys with her uncle from Fiji, cooking traditional Chinese feasts with her mum, sharing dim sum on Sundays with her family and frequent trips to the Sydney fish market.

Prior to opening Jidori, she worked in advertising between Sydney and London for 11 years, the last post of which was at Saatchi & Saatchi where she practiced her knowledge of design and marketing.

Source: Jidori

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