Address: 14-16 Regent Street, London SW1Y 4PH

Opening hours: From 10am till 9pm, Monday-Saturday. On Sundays 11am till 7pm

Telephone:020 3405 1246 (shop), 020 3405 1151 (online shopping)

Web site:http://www.japancentre.com/

Date of visit: 29 June 2010

Summary:

If you are into Japanese food etc, this is probably the place to come.

It used to be sited on the Piccadilly but has moved here since early on this year.

The centre has taken over one wing of the Mitsukoshi Department Stall http://www.london-mitsukoshi.co.uk/top_en.htm. The department stall is well worth a visit – it makes Harrods look cheap (price wise). There is a Japanese restaurant within the department stall.

Within the centre, there is a restaurant, bakery and supermarket. The sushi, rice and noodles are very reasonably priced but they do not sell alcohol with the meal.

Within the supermarket, they do sell Japanese whisky, sake and beer. Lets start with the sake – they range from under £10 to nearly £100. For explainations on sake see my previous article (2009).

The bakery sell all sorts of Japanese bread and there is a fresh food chiller for take away food and vegetables.

At the back of the store are a mixture of things. For non food, they sell good knives, cooking pots and electric rice cookers etc. There is a small stand that will sell you cookbooks – Japanese and English but all on Japaneses recipes.

There is a tea counter where you can buy all sorts of Japanese teas including 100g packs of Sencha at £10 a packet.

The best counter is the sauce counter. Here you can buy hundreds of cooking sauces, vinegars and oil – definitely my favourite. Try the seasme salad dressing or the Udon dip.

There is a frozen section at the back.

They also sell everything online so there is no need to carry that 50kilo sack of rice on your back.

E