Places To Eat In London: Inigo, Soho

I may not be working in an office anymore, but I stuck at my desk job long enough to know that tasty, healthy, good value lunches are a problem. If you work in a building with an on-site cafeteria the lunches may be a little cheaper, but not always good for you, and while bringing a packed lunch from home may always be the ideal, let us be honest and say that does not always happen. In these situations when it got to midday and I was still lunchless I’d usually turn to an Itsu that would usually come in at way over £10, or walk into Soho for an equally as pricy poke bowl. However, I was invited to try Inigo, a new sushi hand roll opening last week, which needs to become part of your ‘I’ve nothing healthy to eat for lunch’ rotation.

The concept is simple, they have 8 different sushi hand rolls made fresh (at Foreman’s no less, so you know you’ll be getting top knotch fish and ingredients) every day, a whole range of salads, hot drinks and some other goodies available to take away with you. Each roll is £3.50, but you can get a decent lunch for £6 – choose either a roll and a side salad for a light lunch, or two hand rolls for something a bit more substantial. 

Each roll is hand finished with a blow torch to make sure you get nice crispy nori (no slightly damp wrappers like you sometimes can get on Wasabi spicy tuna onigiri here), and individually wrapped with a fun sticker so you don’t grab the wrong roll by mistake. Oh, and you see my little coffee cup? That is full of a simply delicious miso soup. Now the temperature has definitely dropped as we run through autumn into winter, somewhere you can get hot miso in a coffee cup to go in Soho is something worth bookmarking. Oh, and also grab a chocolate bite for a sweet treat after lunch: with massive chunks of stem ginger, a good amount of crunch from the almonds and some impossibly rich cocoa, these are so delicious, and so addictive.

Kelly and I visited on a bright, crisp day so we were about to take our lunch around the corner into Ham Yard to catch up and gossip with our feast spread out between us before we caught too much of a chill. I had the Salmon Poke roll which was full of a generous amount of rich, plump salmon, chunks of ripe avocado, pleasantly bright and crunchy pickled daikon, and to me the star of the show, toasted macadamia nuts which added creaminess and crunch every few bites. It was a beautiful roll; literally my only qualm is I think all of Inigo’s rolls have wasabi in which is not listed on the menu – I’m not a massive fan of it, and there was rather a lot of it. Still would not put me off having another one, though! Kelly had the Spicy Tuna. We tried a bite of each others, so I can tell you that it is a bit sweeter from the ponzu the tuna had been marinated in, but still delicious and moreish – perhaps the lighter option to the oily salmon roll.

On the salad front we shared both the Taiwanese Aubergine Salad (aubergine, black vinegar and coriander) and the Spicy Mangetout and Grapefruit Salad (mangetout, grapefruit, chilli oil and sesame seeds) along with a pot of Carrot, Radish and Daikon Pickles. We loved all of them, but the aubergine had to be my favourite; punchy, melt in your mouth and very easy to polish off very quickly. I’d also buy extra pickles next time I’m there to stash in my fridge and eat with other things, as they were very, very perfect and I’m that person who will sit and eat a whole pot of Asian pickles my themselves in a single sitting.

While I’m not in an office anymore I’ve still got meetings to go to so I’m not always home for lunch, so I’d love to hear your go-to’s all around Central London for takeaway lunches, preferably healthy and good value – but I’d love to hear about anything delicious that I may be missing out on (we can’t have that!)

• Pin
• Tweet
• Share