Address: 9 Saxon Street, Cambridge, CB2 1HN [google maps] (the old Cross Keys)
Telephone: 01223 365 321
Website: http://www.japas.co.uk
Opening hours: 11:30-15:00 and 17:30-22:30, Monday-Sunday
Type: Japanese, sushi and noodle.
Posh or common: Common.
Take-it-away option: Yes, collect only.
Lavoratoire Garniers: Inoffensive.
Number of tables: I've forgotten.
Clientele: People checking it out.
Could I take my parents?: I would not eat here again.
Service: Good.
Price for a main course: 6.00-9.80 GBP.
Portion size: Teeny-weeny-peeny-leeny.
Menu choice: 11 starters (7 vegetarian), 60 mains (9 vegetarian).
Good: Good waiting staff. The Menu is large and tapas-style. The sushi is OK.
Bad: A con. It was like in the Apprentice when Paul Stealth bought lots of fluorescent wholesale cheese to sell in a French market. Japas is awful.
Me and Big Fat had an argument, because it was so bad. The first dish (edamame) came out and Big Fat said "that's small," and Big Fat never says things like that. The food was very over-priced and lacked expensive ingredients. The portion size was noticeably very, very small; easily 3/4 of what I think is acceptable.
The food of Big Fat appeared after I had finished. There was no chili oil for the noodles. With the exception of the sushi, the food was bland. The restaurant was dingy with no natural light in the main area. It has been decorated quickly with paint drips and an unfinished, wallpapered ceiling. Our table was sticky.
Even though the restaurant is called the Bento Box, you can't get a bento box in the evening, you can only get a bento box at lunchtime. From the look of the picture of the size of the bento box on a postcard, the bento box would be suitable for a little mouse or an ill person.
A good independent Japanese restaurant would make a fortune in Cambridge. Really, really, really bad, to infinity.
About this Food Blog
-
My big, fat paramour loves food and would want a food blog to be about food. She said that a discussion of anything else would be ridiculous. Sometimes, I don't really care what she says. I like good service best, in a restaurant. My friend, Julio Baptista, likes large portions. My mother won't go back anywhere with bad toilets. Once, in France, she pulled the fringe of her scarf through the bottom of a men's urinal and nearly died from the dirtiness she felt. She hadn't realised and put the scarf back on and she got stranger's wee on her face.
People want different things from a restaurant. I focus here on a discussion of good/bad food and lavs and service and other, in Cambridge restaurants.