Noa

I thoroughly enjoyed my recent visit to Noa. I had one of the set meals, £33 for 3 courses. Although we've eaten Japanese food elsewhere in Bristol, my dining companion assured me this is the most 'authentic' Japanese restaurant in the city. For my part, I thought the food was excellent, everything seemed fresh, full of subtle flavours and beautifully presented. Service good, was just shy of perfect. I would recommend Noa to lovers of food.

Noa is an amazing restaurant. I must have went back there more than 20 time since my first visit earlier this year. I just can't have enough of there sushi and sashimi. The fish are always so fresh. They also have a Japanese classic dishes menu which my father loves. He came to England more than 30 years ago and haven't had chance to visit grandma in Japan again. When I brought him to NOA, he said their Chicken Katsu Curry taste like what grandma used to make. Got a bit of emotional that night.

Anyway, you are lucky if you work in Clifton. Their lunch is so good. My favourites are Ramen and bento boxes. Ramen is the best I tasted in Bristol. So much better than wagamama. Best of all, NOA is very good value for money, a teriyaki bento only cost £6.95. Highly recommended.

My wife and I were disappointed with our first (and likely to be last) visit to Noa for our wedding anniversary.

The waiter and waitresses were welcoming, polite and friendly but were quite amateurish, failing with simple basics, such as not offering to take coats to cloakroom, not helping with the menu and its various options, nor offering wine with the meal.

Starters were delicious: easily the best part of the meal.
Main courses were both very disappointing: chicken katsu turned out to be sliced chicken breast in breadcrumbs (a schnitzel!) served with sticky boiled rice and a curry sauce, which tasted like a packet mix according to my wife (herself a chef); the chicken came to the table came a good five minutes before my grilled red fish appeared, which, though well presented, was under-seasoned and tasteless, with any flavour completely swamped by the jalepino sauce.

I ordered sorbet for dessert, but was served two small impenetrable blocks of ice, which clearly has come straight out of the freezer. After sending it back the waitress had the audacity to claim other customers like their sorbet that hard!!

We didn't hang around for coffee or sake, but then again we weren't offered these either!

Two stars: one for the friendliness of waiter & waitresses, the other for the starters!

Mate, you must hate that restaurant a lot. I don't know what you had there. My friend took me there last week, it was an amazingly nice meal. That was the best Japanese meal I had around Bristol. I had to go to London for a meal like this in the past. Anyway, hat off to the chef!

I went to a supposed Japanese restaurant in Waterloo street Clifton and had one of the worst meals I'd had, I was about to say ages but no, worst meals.

Starters were £6 for small standard Fried Squid and over cooked dumplings.

The staggering element was a soft shell salad going for £9 which consisted of about 20p worth of basic salad and one crab heavily saturated in fat possessing no flavour or meat within it.

A friend ordred a pork loin (spelt Lion on menu) costing £6 deviod of flavour, basically just a Schnitzel cut into strips with a heavy packet sauce on the side, no rice, no attention to detail.

Maybe as part of a large menu wita variety of options yes I'd understand and yes these dishes exist on any Japanses menue but bnot a main dishes at these prices.

Japanese should be simple quick, fresh and full of variety cooked accurately. To accompany I had a tasteless side dish of spinach soaked in sesame oil.

Tell a lie it tasted of old fake leather. School satchelesque.The quality of the cooking was poor and the service, although very polite, was patchy and they kept forgetting basics like the water.

Cardiff used to have a superb Japanese restaurant in the bay quarter and an even better Korean on Penarth Road, both now closed so to pass these dishes off at these prices in this credit climate is astounding to me.

Maybe Cliftonites don’t get out of town much? They’ll be closed in two months if they don’t sort the kitchen out. Intriguingly we saw that chap from the Diy S.O.S program that always looks totally knackered.