There was a Friday last month that was 'National Sibling day', which I celebrated with the same fervor and excitement that I usually reserve for 'changing the dishwasher salt day' and 'buying new toothpaste day'. Actually, I'm being unkind. I greatly enjoy new toothpaste day. Toothpaste, with its wide array of untenable promises and astonishing technological advances is a law unto itself. Visiting the toothpaste aisle makes me hugely alarmed that so many of the best and brightest minds of our time seem to be furthering the cause of pearly whites, rather than, say, incurable diseases. (Not that the cause of incurable diseases ought to be furthered. Quite the opposite, in fact. They should be robustly stopped in their tracks).
Anyway, national sibling day would have come and gone as usual, without impeding in the slightest fashion upon my consciousness (I was, as ever, hugely preoccupied with discovering which of my flatmates was using my extremely impressive-sounding toothpaste), had it not been for a call from my little sister. 'It's National Sibling day,' she told me. 'I think we should hang out.'
My little sister and I are not the types to get over-emotional about significant days - last year, I greeted her on her birthday by telling her crossly that at her 'very great age she should have learned how to be quicker in the shower', but, constantly on the lookout for things we can make fun of, we are early-adopters of ridiculous new events. (Later, I'll tell you all about the enormous fuss we make of National Doughnut Day, which ironically falls in the same month as National Running Day. We're working on a hybrid celebration for 2015.)
I took my little sister to K10 for National Sibling Day. It's on Appold Street, just behind Liverpool Street Station. If one knows where it is (or has even the most rudimentary grasp of how to use a map), it would take approximately four and a half minutes to get to the restaurant from the station. Following my little sister's repeated assurances that she knew 'exactly' where she was going, we arrived at K10 fifteen minutes later, in precisely the sort of good mood that wandering about in circles puts on into.
Luckily, K10 had a booth for us. It's a busy, buzzy kind of place, filled on a Friday lunchtime with men in suits, racing to eat as much as possible before someone realizes that they're out of the office. K10 offers great opportunities for this, operating a conveyor belt system that winds happily throughout the restaurant, placing its Japanese chefs in the centre of the room.
Conveyor belt sushi has taken somewhat of a knocking in the past couple of years, becoming synonymous with over-priced, sub-standard Japanese food. K10 couldn't be further from this. It serves very good, varied Japanese food: fresh sushi, sashimi and salads, as well as a range of hot dishes, including katsu curries, teriyakis, tempura and K10's chilli baby squid, of which we had 2 portions. The gyoza, brought to your table piping hot and fresh from the kitchen, were also worth a mention: as someone who recently was told to 'stop eating' at a dumpling restaurant, I am primed to recognise top gyoza quality.
K10 is the perfect lunchtime restaurant: quick, top-quality food served in an attractive and convenient location. In fact, my little sister and I liked it so much that we're tempted to start celebrating real occasions there- starting with Father's Day.