Six of One: Single Dish Specialists
The best Japanese breakfast in London, and more singularities, by Riana Austin, Sharan Dhaliwal, Guan Leong, Angela Hui, Feroz Gajia, and Sejal Sukhadwala
Hello and welcome back to Vittles Restaurants. Today, we’re publishing another special edition of Six of One — an issue that hones on six places doing one thing extraordinarily well. Below, you’ll find London recommendations for Punjabi-style samosas, Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, kakigori, haniid and more.
But first, we want to introduce Riana Austin, one of our 2025 mentees and whose first piece of writing we’re publishing today! In Riana’s application, she opened with the line: ‘I like bitter melon, snacking and the Holloway Road.’ It was immediately clear that Riana was not only well placed to write about food in London, she was suitably well versed in the mechanisms of the attention economy, too.
“Growing up as a confused kid in a multicultural but not always integrated London, local diasporic restaurants were gold to me,” she wrote. “If outside their walls the faultlines of tolerance were all-too-often exposed, inside – cheeks pinched and asked after by owners who knew our names – I actually felt like I could belong.”
We hope that you enjoy her writing as much as we do. But before we get to her entry on an excellent Japanese cafe on the Caledonian Road, I asked Riana to say hi to you. AC
Hi everyone, I’m Riana. I was born in Indonesia but I’m a longtime Londoner. My love for diasporic restaurants goes way back: as a transracially adopted kid, meals out were everything because they delighted my tummy and made me believe I could belong. Aged 8, while having an eating contest with my brother in Wong Kei, I decided being a restaurant reviewer would be the best job in the world. I therefore feel like I’ve won the lottery to switch up my tunic (I work as a carer) for an audience with Vittles connoisseurs.
1. Ikoi – Japanese breakfast
Growing up in the 90s, the Caledonian Road I knew was notorious for its working girls, gangsters and rogues. My childminder’s dad would drive me about in a white Rolls-Royce, and I wonder what he’d have to say about Mr Corcoran and his postcard whatnottery, but times change. In the last five years, as the scaffolding rose on Google’s million sq ft HQ near King’s Cross station, restaurants suddenly appeared like barnacles on a whale.
Of these, the one I’m loyal to is Ikoi. One block up from the Yellow Bittern, it’s got heart without fanfare and does the kind of Japanese food that’s still very rare in this city.
Operating out of a tiny kitchen, Mika Harrop and her four children serve ofukuro no aji, or ‘mother’s home cooking’. Opening at 9am (until 4pm each day), their Fukuoka-style breakfast of rice with mustard greens and sesame oil (plus miso soup, kobachi and pickles) is a tribute to simplicity.
With everything at Ikoi, the care is in the details: not just in the quality of the food, but in the wabi-sabi sincerity of mismatched crockery, imperfectly shaped onigiri and remnants of crust on the bulging-yet-weightless egg sando.
And though the Japanese breakfast here may well be the move, my favourite dish is the spicy tofu udon. The broth is a next-level consommé: delicate and finely judged, it’s also an umami-maxed wallop spurred on by chilli. Mika says she doesn’t do restaurant food, but the skills on show here are fierce, honed by years raising her young and working as a caterer. I’d gladly pay out, but nothing on the menu costs more than £10.
Ikoi means ‘rest’ or ‘relaxation’ and at Mika’s the takers are broad, from time-pressed workers in the week to small groups and Japanese regulars on a Saturday. Against the backdrop of Big Tech and rapid change, its mix of birch wood, unhurried movements and Mika’s cooking cocoons and restores. Riana Austin
102 Caledonian Rd, N1 9DN
Behind the paywall: Sharan Dhaliwal bags samosas, one of Feroz Gajia’s many obsessions is kakigori, Angela Hui on Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, and more recommendations. You can subscribe to Vittles for £7/month or £59 for the whole year, which gives you access to restaurant recommendations from the last five years, including the Six of One map.