London's largest Asian food hall, Bang Bang Oriental sits on the Edgware Road in Colindale and packs nearly 30 specialist food kiosks into 32,000 square feet, spanning everything from Cantonese roast duck and Korean bibimbap to Indian street food, Japanese ramen, Filipino grilled pork and Taiwanese bubble tea. The format is simple: grab a table, split up, and work your way around the stalls. Worth the trip out to Zone 4 for any serious fan of Asian food.
A long-standing and much-loved pan-Asian restaurant on Kensington High Street, Hare and Tortoise has been serving fresh handmade sushi, ramen, curry laksa, roast duck and noodle dishes since 1996. The bright, airy space is relaxed and unpretentious, the portions are generous and the prices are considerably kinder than most of its neighbours, making it one of the best value Asian restaurants in west London.
A small Japanese grocery store just off the Finchley Road that doubles as one of the best grab and go lunch spots in north west London. Alongside pantry staples and imported Japanese ingredients, the chilled counter is stacked daily with homemade karaage, okonomiyaki skewers, onigiri, bento boxes, sashimi and donburi bowls, all made fresh on site and sold at prices that feel genuinely remarkable for London. A beloved local institution.
The flagship London location of a bold new sushi concept from Dong Hyun Kim, the founder of Wasabi, Sushinoya occupies a corner site on Shaftesbury Avenue and sets out to do something genuinely different: omakase-quality sushi made entirely from whole fish, cut and prepared on site by chefs each day, in a grab and go format. Rare cuts including chutoro tuna belly, yellowtail and eel sit alongside hot bento and seasonal boxes, and the quality is a significant step above anything else in the grab and go sushi market.
