WE'RE in Sheffield's latest noodle bar and as it's called Tokyou I reckon I ought to at least eat one Japanese dish.
Tokyou spreads its net wide over South East Asia. There are 150 dishes on the order-by-numbers menu: Cantonese, Malaysian, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Korean and Thai as well as Japanese.
It offers half a dozen Japanese set meals for around a fiver but I'm having problems trying to translate it. Parts of the menu seem to be written in a hybrid of Japanese and English – Japlish.
"Japanese set meal – this is one diverse wrap meal, has below the dishes coved (sic) on the boiled rice," it says.
I opt for the chicken with XO sauce and hope for the best.
When it comes, on a plastic tray with plastic dishes, it looks a bargain. There's a bowl of thin vegetable soup with scraps of seaweed which another bowl of hot-sweet sauce livens up.
There's a dish of diced chicken with potato, a big bowl of chicken with noodles, a salad of shredded lettuce, sweetcorn and mayonnaise, and some sliced orange.
It costs £5.20
"Not at all bad," says my wife, who has finished up eating most of it. "You wouldn't want much more than this."
Tokyou is very new, on Charter Square, the latest transformation of premises which have been different types of cafes and restaurants over the last few years.
It's smart, minimal, with white and brick walls, a wooden floor and beech benches neatly lined up. It reminds us a little of Wagamama. "Wagamama?" says manager, Jiangping Zhu, after our meal. "We are much cheaper."
Indeed they are. And smaller. Whereas Wagamama has a chain of over 60, Tokyou has just two. The other one is in Liverpool.
Right now Liverpool is a lot busier than Sheffield but people will need to find out Tokyou exists. It was quiet on our night but Sheffield has a big oriental population and the students, still on holiday during our visit, will surely make up its market.
We had varied luck with the starters. Be prepared to share because our dishes came at separate times. Four crispy duck spring rolls (£3.80) were tasty, with a thin, gingery sauce. There was hardly any taste in the skewered king prawns (£4.50) until we dipped them in their satay sauce.
Starters are served up in plastic dishes which look like boats, with a compartment at the end for sauce. That's it. You don't get a plate and eat straight from the dish.
Few of the mains go through the £5 barrier.
Tokyou says it makes its own noodles and about half the menu involves them in one form or another: ramen, hofum, donfen or vermicelli.
My main course E-Mein (£5.20) claimed Taiwanese parentage – a bed of flat, oval noodles with a topping of char-sui pork, chicken, dried mushrooms, crabsticks, a couple of king prawns and vegetables.
You can order it dry or wet, depending on how much sauce you want.
If you've ever wondered what XO sauce is, it's a pretty recent Chinese invention and is made from various dried seafoods, chillies and ham.
It was a filling, modestly- flavoured dish.
This was quite enough for us so a third order, mixed vegetables in black bean sauce (£4.40) went largely uneaten but we liked the variety and texture of the ingredients.
Like Wagamama, Tokyou, which played loud Western pop music on our night, makes a decent stopping place for a quick, inexpensive refuelling hour. But unlike Wagamama, which keeps the atmosphere on the chilly side, it's a good deal warmer.
Drinks are very cheap. A bottle of Asahi Japanese beer is only £1.80 and green tea is, as usual, free.
The bill was £26.70 but they were giving a 20 per cent discount during the first few weeks opening so we paid only £21.30. Quite a bargain.
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