Food review: Japanese restaurant Youka in Wan Chai

Youka is an easy place to like. Some Japanese restaurants are so beautiful and formal you feel you should sit up straight and speak in a hushed voice. But Youka is casual and comfortable. Although the restaurant lacks a window, it feels cosy, rather than claustrophobic. We sat at the sushi bar in front of chef Ito Katsuhiro, who prepared most of the raw fish dishes.

Youka's interior is modern but the food is traditional. The menu lists dishes prepared in all the usual Japanese styles: sushi, sashimi, grilled, stewed and fried items and, of course, rice and noodles. But the menu here is pared down, which makes it a lot easier to pick out the good dishes.

Apart from an insipid iceberg lettuce salad with an uninspired dressing served on a set lunch menu, we liked everything we tried.

There's quite a bit of overlap between the lunch and dinner menus, and while the sets are more expensive in the evening (when presumably, you get larger portions), the à la carte selection is priced the same.

The deluxe sashimi set lunch (HK$298) featured a really excellent selection of pristine raw fish, such as toro, uni, hotate (scallop) and buri (mature yellowtail). It also came with an appetiser, deliciously wobbly chawanmushi (steamed egg custard), miso soup and fresh fruit.

Grilled ox tongue with pepper (HK$90), served with a dollop of grainy mustard and finely shaved sweet white onion, was another good dish, with tender slices of juicy meat. Grilled saba (mackerel) with salt (HK$130) came as a large fillet of sweet, moist fish with delicately crisp skin. The mound of grated daikon did a good job of cutting the oily richness of the fish.