Beer and Buns serves, wait for it – beer and buns! They offer the UK’s largest range of Japanese craft beer alongside soft, steamed Hirata buns with a whole host of fillings. Oh, and they have wings too!
Hidden above contemporary Japanese restaurant K10, not far from Liverpool Street, Beer and Buns is a take on a traditional Japanese Izakaya – a type of low-key bar for after-work eating and drinking. The interior is casual, a mixture of table seating and high stools, with a bar for you to order your food and drink. On arrival you’re given popcorn (why-oh-why can’t we resist popcorn, even when we know we’re about to have dinner?!) while you take a look at the menu.
As we’ve mentioned, the menu is pretty simple – they offer a selection of buns with fillings such as chicken karaage, pork belly, soft shell crab, halloumi and aubergine katsu. Then there’s a range of chicken wings and a selection of sides and lighter bites. From the bun selection we enjoyed the soft shell crab with a fresh green papaya salad in a Thai style dressing and the aubergine katsu with rocket and harissa mayo.
The wings come in four flavours – tebasake soy garlic, sweet and spicy, Korean hot and naked. We tried one of each and would recommend the same so you can try each flavour. But if we were pushed to choose a favourite… either the sweet and spicy or Korean hot won it for us. They weren’t blow-your-head-off spicy but had a good kick and a crispy coating.
We also tried the chicken karaage from the bites menu. They’re basically bite-size pieces of chicken so we don’t know exactly why they were so good but even when we were feeling stuffed we couldn’t help going back for one more! We also can’t help but mention the cheesy Korean fries, basically crispy fries, covered in cheese and hot sauce. I mean what more could you want?
If you can restrain yourself and have room for a dessert, the toffee chocolate brownie with miso butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream is ridiculous. But you might want to leave yourself a bit more time than usual to crawl back to the tube to get home!
Open Monday – Friday, for more information, visit: https://www.beerandbuns.co.uk
