Zen Japenese Food Fast

Zen Japanese Food Fast

Mon-Sat, 11am-9pm; Sun, 11:30am-8pm

Heading to a movie at the Village the other night, I decided to pop into Zen, the Japanese fast food shop next to SteinMart on Anderson Road. Zen is a "pop in" kind of place. There's nothing particularly comfortable about it, although the quirky black-and-white photos on the wall are fun to look at and the built-in, bar-style seating and booth spaces are fine for the short term.

What Zen specializes in is Japanese food, fast. There is sushi, and there are noodle bowls, and a couple of Japanese-inspired salads with ingredients like udon noodles and chopped chicken. The restaurant is big on the heart-smart thing; at least a dozen of its offerings are marked with a healthy little heart symbol. I sampled the sushi: spicy tuna rolls ($2.09, four pieces) and teriyaki salmon rolls ($2.09, four pieces). Next came an "enlightened" dish of spicy chicken and shrimp ($5.89). Everything was fine, but nothing stood out as worth raving about. Given that the sushi was sold in a plastic box from a glass "takeout" case, it tasted relatively fresh. The fish was firm, cool, and moist. Only the rice betrayed the fresh claim, being slightly dried on the outside. As for the spicy chicken and shrimp bowl, it was significantly more substantial, with a handful of shredded vegetables added to complement the medium-sized grilled shrimp and diminutive chunks of chicken.

Zen certainly isn't expensive, but it isn't particularly remarkable food for its price, either. The restaurant seemed to be dominated by a neighborhood shopping/moviegoing crowd, along with a few groups of teenagers who sagely preferred to dine on this kind of fast food over McDonalds. I can't emphatically recommend Zen as a dining destination -- there are myriad other places in town that turn out better sushi and noodle bowls, but then I can't exactly give it the thumbs-down, either. The restaurant does what it seemingly set out to do: provide sushi and other Japanese-inspired dishes to strip mall diners on the run. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what you're getting before you go.