Aji Japanese Canteen in London

We walk by the Aji Japanese Canteen every time we walked from our hotel to the tourist areas and every time we did, there always was a nice crowd inside – which made me think it’s not bad! It’s located on the South bank of River Thames just after you cross the Waterloo bridge. One evening, we finally popped in as it was a cold and rainy evening… and they had free internet which we were looking for a place to sit down and use!

It’s a different concept in this restaurant, or what they call Canteen as the space is large, but it is a seat yourself like a food court. Then, you order from the menu an they servers will bring you your food. We each ordered our own dish, and the food came out really quickly. They didn’t mind us staying there longer than we needed to, or anyone doing that actually!

I ordered the Kara Age Don which was ginger flavoured crispy fried chicken, boiled eggs served in a bowl of rice with shredded cabbage, Japanese QP Mayonnaise and Shiso flavoured Sauce

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The other entree we ordered was a Soup Noodles, where you got to pick the kind of noodle you wanted, the type of soup, and the topping you’d like! So, this was fun as we got to personalize our noodle dish. We chose to have Ramen, which is a thin egg noodle, (one of our favourite types of noodles) with Shoyu soup which is a chicken broth that is kind of “soy sauce” flavoured. Then, we topped this bowl of ramen with Cha-Shu and garnished it with bean sprouts, shitake mushrooms and bamboo shoot.

Overall, this place is decent. It’s not the best, but it definitely hit the spot and it served our purpose of getting some nice noodle soup in our bellies, use the internet, and wait out the rain. This isn’t a location I would return to mainly because there are a lot of Japanese resturants that have opened up along the banks of River Thames.

AjiZen Japanese Canteen

Waterloo
Riverside Building County Hall
Waterloo, United Kingdom
(0871) 962 0035

Days Hotel London – Waterloo

During our stay in London, we stayed in a small hotel called Days Hotel London – Waterloo which didn’t matter as we were only there for the bed – for a few hours! We were actually expecting the room to look more like a cabin on a cruise ship, so when we checked-in, the hotel met and exceeded our expectations!

The bathroom was extremely small, as you’re staring at yourself in the reflection of the mirror on top of the sink while you’re on the toilet. There was no bathtub, just a tiny stand-up shower. There was plenty of space in the hotel suite itself, and comes with complimentary coffees and teas. The star rating for this hotel is a 3 Star hotel, which is fine of a rating. I may have rated it 2.5 stars, but that’s my opinion.

A few neat things about this hotel though, it’s got no air conditioning, and just offers a fan. It was fine when we went (in September) as it was cool and rainy for a few days. We actually turned on the heat at nights too. A good thing about this hotel, the windows do open for fresh air, and it’s 100% smoke free. I never would’ve thought that would be possible in England as it seems like everyone smokes.

The best thing about this hotel would be the location – being a few minutes walk from Lambeth North station makes it really convenient. For the big Tube station, the Waterloo station is about a 10 minute walk away. On the same street as the hotel – going towards the station, there are little grocery/convenient stores that seemed to be opened a lot and was great for us to pick things up like water and snacks.

It was lovely, and from our window, we were able to see the top of London Eye as we were staying at the Southbank.

Days Hotel London- Waterloo

54 Kennington Road, London, SE1 7BJ GB
Phone: 44-2079-221331