Are you looking for all-you-can-eat sushi in London? Then, be sure to check out the Saturday bottomless brunch at Issho-Ni London. You can order delicious Izakaya-style sharing plates throughout the week at this Japanese restaurant. On Saturday, they pull out all the stops to provide you with tantalizing sushi, tasty mains, and great prosecco.
When my husband and I were invited to try out their Saturday Brunch menu, we happily booked a train to London for a food-centered mini trip. We live in Kathmandu and visited my husband’s family in The New Forest. Although sushi is available in Kathmandu, it is often inhibitively expensive (even for ex-pats) and altogether not that nice. Issho-Ni turned out to be a real treat.
Read here all about this all-you-can-eat sushi brunch in London with bottomless prosecco!
Table of Contents
The Restaurant
Issho-Ni Japanese restaurant in London is a cosy restaurant serving both excellent Japanese Izakaya-style food and unique cocktails. Izakayas are Japanese bars where you can order small plates and alcoholic drinks. They are the more sophisticated, Japanese version of British bar food.
At the door, you are welcomed by a friendly staff member who will show you to your place. There is both inside and outside seating, but as we opted for the brunch menu, we chose to sit inside.
The restaurant’s interior designer successfully achieved that Izakaya-feel through the lights and colour schemes. The restaurant is not overly bright, and the yellow bulbs and fairy lights make the place feel romantic and intimate. The most significant difference is that there are no large tables and bars to be shared with other patrons (And that is not a bad thing at all) and that the seats are actually very comfortable (no hard wooden benches).
This is a great restaurant to bring a date or celebrate a birthday. Be sure to make a reservation, though, as it can get quite busy. It is not hard to see why Issho-Ni has grown to be one of the most popular Japanese restaurants in the area!
The Location
Issho-Ni is located on Bethnal Green Road in the popular district of Shoreditch. It almost seems as if Issho-Ni is situated on the divide between the hipster high street of Shoreditch with its Brewdog pubs, cocktail bars, and plant shops and the Bethnal Green side of the street with Bangladeshi restaurants, local pubs and countless South Asian Bazaars.
Both the Shoreditch Highstreet overground station and the Bethnal Green underground station (Central Line) have exits on Bethnal Green Road and are a short walk away from the restaurant, making Issho-Ni both easy to reach and easy to find.
The Brunch
Once you sit down, a staff member will welcome you to the table and offer you some water. They will also explain the brunch menu and the alcoholic options.
During your 1.5-hour time slot, you can order as many snacks and as much sushi as you like, provided that you have finished your plates. This means that you, for instance, cannot order more sushi until you have finished all the sushi you ordered previously. I thought this was great as I hate to see food wasted.
You can also order one main course per person. Main courses can be both veg and non-veg, and a fish option is also available.
As for the drinks – you can choose to either go for the unlimited drinks package or order drinks off the menu. The unlimited drinks package comes with Prosecco, Prosecco Rose and a Bloody Geisha. The Bloody Geisha is Issho-Ni’s signature cocktail and consists of Vodka, Tomato Juice, and a Japanese Spice Mix.
The brunch costs £36 per person, and the drinks package adds another £17. This is great if you love sushi as much as I do, and you have something to celebrate – or you want to have a boozy brunch with your friends.
The Menu
As mentioned, the brunch menu at Issho-Ni consists of unlimited snacks and sushi and the main course of which you can choose one option.
For starters, you can order Edamame, Chuka Seaweed, kimchi and wasabi peas.
When you first sit down, the staff member brings you a selection of all the snacks and sushi. This means you have a chance to try all of them so you can order more of what you like. I particularly enjoyed the Edamame and the Kimchi. I loved that the kimchi was quite spicy. I eat a lot of kimchi in Kathmandu (Korean pop culture is vogue here) and have found that kimchi in the UK is often a bit more toned down. The Kimchi in Issho-Ni, on the other hand, was perfect! Great flavour and a perfect level of spiciness.
You can also order two kinds of sashimi: salmon and seabass. Usually, I would be all over the sashimi, but the sushi was so lovely that I decided to focus on the sushi.
The all-you-can-eat sushi options are Salmon avocado, Prawn Tempura, Spicy Salmon and Veggie. The Salmon Avocado was my absolute favourite. The chef had put a little bit of lemon in the mayonnaise, lifting the flavour of the sushi to be quite refreshing. The lemon is not overpowering but perfectly compliments the fish and avocado.
My husband loved the prawn tempura sushi, and the spicy salmon was also excellent. In all honesty, I was expecting the maki rolls to be these small sushi bites with a single piece of fish or a single finger of cucumber. However, we were served large rolls of a very high standard. In Itsu, you would pay £ 28 for a California platter – which contains fewer pieces and is of a vastly lower quality than the sushi served at Issho-Ni. In other words: if you would come here and order one selection of the maki rolls, you already have a great deal.
My husband chose the Chicken Katsu Curry, which was absolutely delicious for the main courses, and I opted for the Salmon Terriyaki. The salmon was cooked to perfection and had a lot of flavours. When cooking salmon, you should never be afraid to use a good amount of course salt or rock salt; that is precisely what the chef did! The salmon came with a little bowl of Teriyaki sauce. You could choose to either pour it over the salmon or dip your salmon in the sauce. I opted for the latter and enjoyed every single bite.
The drinks
I have a confession to make. 2 weeks before brunching at Issho-Ni, I was in France visiting my parents. I noticed the Kylie Minogue Rosé and Sauvignon Blanc in one of the supermarkets we visited. I had a bit of a laugh about it – I mean, Kylie Minogue! Wine? Ha!
But guess what! I was incredibly surprised by her Rosé Prosecco! It was delicious, and I preferred it to the other sparkling wine offered. Both were nice and of excellent quality – especially for brunch, but the Kylie Minogue was a pleasant surprise!
Conclusion
Issho-Ni is a great restaurant to visit if you are looking for all-you-can-eat sushi during a bottomless brunch. Their sushi is delicious, the mains are perfectly cooked, and their bubbly is nice. What more do you want for your birthday, romantic dinner or even a little “self-love” meal on your own!
If I would ever move to London again (the chance is slim, though), I would probably come here once a month – if not more, to satiate my sushi cravings. So I full-heartedly recommend trying out the Issho-Ni Saturday brunch.
Not a brunch person? Why not head to Issho-Ni on other days?
On Tuesdays, you get 20% off on food. On Wednesday, a bottle of wine is half price.
On Thursday, you get a fiver off a shush platter for 2, and on Friday, you can head to Issho-Ni after work (do make a reservation!) as you get two cocktails for £14 between 12:00 and 18:30.
You can find out more about the brunch here!
My husband and I are real foodies. I have recently written a great article on the best restaurants in Mayfair which you can read here.
Lieze Neven is a globetrotting travel writer and expat currently based in Nepal. With a passion for exploration, she has lived in Dubai, the UK, and Belgium, alongside her international teacher husband. Her parents live in France and she tries to visit Paris at least once a year. Together, they travel the world looking for the best hotels, experiences and food locations have to offer!