Inso: A Pan-Asian Meal

A Decent Enough Pan-Asian Meal for About £20

Sure, we were happy enough and were definitely full – but would we go back?

Inso only opened last year in Northwood Hills but despite that, it’s already has some positive attention, with lots of people sending out good vibes about this north-west London pan-Asian restaurant, so we thought we’d check it out.

We visited on a Sunday evening at about 6pm without making a booking and were seated fairly quickly. First impressions were good – the layout is fairly minimal with small stools under stools – although the restaurant was fairly cold and it was some time before either of us took off our coats.

Looking at the menu, Inso caters for lots of different tastes and has various Thai, Japanese and Chinese meals on offer.

When Fatima and I go out for a meal, we typically get quite a few sides and then one main meal to share, so we can try lots of different things. As we couldn’t narrow our choice, we went for a starter platter (£8.95), which included shrimp crackers, satay chicken, chicken gyoza (dumplings), sesame prawn toast and vegetable spring rolls.

It all came out fairly quickly, within ten minutes or so, and we were given shrimp crackers almost immediately. The table already had a sprinkling of condiments – soy sauce, salt, chilly oil and chilly flakes – but the starters also came with sweet chilly sauce and a peanut sauce for the satay.

The crackers were crunchy (t would have been terrible if they managed to get this wrong), and the rest of the food that came out was really hot.

The satay was really disappointing. It was fairly dry and the peanut sauce was more creamy than it was peanut-y. Would not recommend.

Satay, sesame prawn toast, spring rolls, chicken gyoza with sweet chilly and peanut sauce

The others? The fried chicken dumplings and vegetable spring rolls were crunchy and, well, the best way I can describe them is that they were good enough. The same can go for the spring rolls too – they were pretty good but neither stood out.

We also got salmon nigiri, which was pretty good – sticky rice with a piece of salmon on top. Fatima had never really tried sushi before so this was really all about seeing whether she liked it.

For our main course we had phad thai, which was noodles with a smattering of chicken, peanuts and vegetables all tossed in tamarind sauce. The meal was quite sweet but with a squeeze of lime on the noodles, it drowned out the tamarind slightly and the meal tasted much better. It was a fairly decent portion and we ended up having to take some home as the starters were so filling!

All in, it cost just over £21, which, considering how much we had, was really quite reasonable. Would we go back? We probably wouldn’t go back anytime soon but we'd definitely go back if we were after some decent Thai food and didn't want to travel too far from home.