If you live with a plethora of anime fans like I do - you may want to consider heading to Uzumaki - London's anime themed restaurant. My son is a huge fan of One Piece, so for his 12th birthday we took him for a bowl of ramen and some bubble tea, and it certainly did not disappoint!
Uzumaki is tucked away on Great Russell Street, just off of the Tottenham Court Road in London's west end. This small restaurant is manga and anime themed serving noodles, including the famous Naruto ramen, Luffy meat on the bone, Japanese food and bubble tea.
I booked online for five of us, although the tables can be set up for sharing with long benches, we did have a table to ourselves. The aesthetic in here is amazing! There is a big skylight above and the walls are decorated with bright murals, encompassing so many different anime characters from One Piece to Demon Slayer and everything in between. The tables have jars of spices and cute chopsticks with kawaii cat holders. We visited late October so it was decorated for Halloween inside.
Bring your stretchy pants as the portions here are big! Seriously, even my husband struggled to get through the bowl of ramen!
Let's start with the drinks. We are big bubble tea fans. Uzumaki offer both milk bubble tea and fruit bubble tea. We went for the Thunder Breathing Mango with popping bubbles and the Love Breathing Sakura which has coconut jelly in. There are also soft drinks, Saki and beer available.
Then there is the food - it all looked so appealing making it very difficult to choose.
So, in the end we had the Food Wars karaage chicken to share (this is really good by the way) and my daughter chose to have the Choji's Chakra chicken croquettes. These are large curry chicken balls that are served on salad.
The rest of us went for ramen.
The birthday boy went for the Naruto ramen, my husband had the Bankai! beef ramen, I had the Tenten's spicy tantan and my daughter had the Vegeta ramen. As I mentioned earlier, these bowls seem huge. You are certainly getting your monies worth. The ramen dishes start at around £13 upwards.
The staff there were lovely and the whole place had a very relaxed vibe with music from different anime series playing in the background. The toilets are downstairs and again, very in-keeping with the anime themed decor.
There is a little gift shop at the front of the restaurant selling anime themed goodies and they also have an online shop.
Would we recommend? Yes, most definitely. It was an expensive treat for sure, but for a birthday it was well worth it. They even gave my son a little gift when we arrived there and they also shared pictures on their Instagram page, which he was chuffed about.
Uzumaki
107 Great Russell Street,
London,
WC1B 3NB