We've now been a few times to The Boat, a Japanese place near Surbiton station. It's little more than a cafe in some ways, but quite attractive in its way. It's become a regular choice after the farmer's market. The walls are decorated with boat-related images, though some are more Nelson-era ships.
It describes itself as a Sushi and Ramen restaurant, but it does some other things too that they call "kitchen dishes", which is what we have tended to go for. Typically we order edamame beans, but often choose the seaweed salad instead - this features two types of seaweed, and is very mild.
Pretty regularly now we go for the karaage, deep-fried chicken served with a spiced-up salad cream. A recent favourite too is prawn katsu, prawns in breadcrumbs with a strange dense soy sauce. This latest time we also had the chicken gyoza and yellowtail tuna. We've recently taken to also ordering an inside out roll dish (rice stuffed with avocado and something) of some kind - soft-shell crab, spicy tuna, or on this latest visit beef. We don't really need it and often end up taking much of it away. The beef was a bit of an odd mix with the other dishes. There is a range of other sushi, nigri and sashimi, but we don't always go for those - the sushi sashimi sets look good though.
Our wine choice is the Secretary Bird SB from SA at £22. The staff are very friendly and chatty, and the light jazz background very pleasant. Total of around £75 without service (they prefer cash). Maybe not worth a visit across London in itself, but worth looking up if you're in the area.
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Another local we've now tried a couple of times is Cappadocia, near Kingston station. The Turkish restaurant is a pretty big place, with a take-away joined on. Maybe good for groups. Lots of Turkish-looking people in on both occasions.
On both occasions we've had the lamb's liver and the acili ezme (a spicy salad) as starters. The liver is very good, dry and tasty; the salad a huge hit of chilli if you're not careful. The first time we tried the Bolu Manti, meat stuffed dumplings with yoghurt. We were expecting something like a dim sum dumpling, but they were much smaller, so the ratio of meat to dough wrapper much less. OK, but rather heavy without a lot of flavour. This last time we had tiger prawns with garlic instead,
The first time I had the special flamed beef stew - Testi - as a main. Elaborately presented in a clay pot on a bed of flaming stones it looks pretty sensational. But the flaming is pointless - it is just a beef stew with red wine, a good sized portion but nothing special. That time B had the prawns as a main course, large ain a good sauce.
On our second visit B chose the diced lamb on aubergine puree and garlic yoghurt. She found that rather too smoky for her taste. My diced chicken breast with ginger was better, a thick almost curry-like sauce and good moist meat. Portions are generally large. They do a range of kebabs as you'd expect and the mixed grill is huge.
Both times we had a bottle of French Viognier at £25. The first time we ordered a second bottle, but they didn't have another so proposed substituting a Chardonnay from the same vineyard - we had a Sauvignon instead. The second time, it was just a couple of glasses of house white.
Service was efficient, fairly friendly head waiter the first time, rather cold chap the second. The first time we had a 20% off food voucher and the bill was £114; the second time without it came to £110.
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