Akira

October 23, 2024

This Asian fusion restaurant is located on the 1st floor of Westgate Mall, Westlands. I was impressed by the decor already when I entered; the minimal wood styling and sleek furniture are so well done. They have different types of seating areas depending on what your mood is like. If you’re a big group you can take one of the bigger dining tables, if you want more of an experience you can try the Japanese style dining tables where the seats are not elevated and have you literally sitting on the ground - on very comfy cushions though!

You can also choose to sit at the bar, their bar stools are actually spacious and comfortable. There’s a part of the bar that faces the cleaning area unfortunately and I think they can’t take away that option due to maximising space but I don’t know if anyone would want to sit facing the kitchen sink. They may wanna rethink that section.

The menu has a good variety from sushi, sashimi to ramen, noodle and rice dishes, to your steaks and lamb chops etc., options are in plenty. For starters we had the duck dumplings (KSH1200) to the pork belly skewers (KSH1100). For mains we had kimchi fried rice (KSH1250) and spicy chicken ramen (KSH1100). I actually don’t remember what I had to drink here but my friend had the litchi gin & tonic (KSH1050) which she said had very little gin…

The pork belly looked good but just tasted okay. They were a bit too fatty and needed salt. I squeezed some lime on them and dipped them in soy sauce and that made them taste much better. The duck dumplings were amazing especially with some chilli! The sauce accompanying this dish was a bit too sweet so I didn’t end up using it much.

The Kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage) fried rice was really good. It comes with a fried egg on top to add a bit of protein to the mix. Drizzle some soy sauce and that’s a meal that will fill you up, we shared the one dish we still didn’t finish.

For the Chicken ramen - the chicken and broth were both very flavourful and spiced well. The noodles though were not my fave, I realised there and then that I don’t like Udon noodles, they have a very starchy taste that I just couldn’t get behind.

You guys know I’m not a sushi babe like that but my friend is and she tried the crazy salmon sushi (KSH1900). She said it had way too much rice and too little salmon, it just tasted okay, wasn’t out of this world sushi.

Service here was good, servers were quite attentive. The ambience was a bit of a mixed bag for me because this restaurant is right next to Onza, the French restaurant at Westgate and that day (Friday), Onza had a live band which was far too loud. We weren’t in Onza and we still felt like we couldn’t hear each other! That part I didn’t like, I think the volume could be reduced a bit especially during standard dining hours and maybe later in the night the volume can be higher.

That aside - the ambience minus the loud music is very chill and the seating plan is well laid out where you’re not too close to the next table so you don’t have to overhear other conversations. Akira is quite pricey though so plan ahead before going here but I think it’s worth a visit. Great for fancy dinners, date nights, casual lunches etc.