The Japanese Canteen

For lunch this place is a good choice but do not expect any special regarding the location itself. The food is tasty, basic Asian food. I would come back for a quick lunch.

I agree with Craig, OUCH!
Japanese Canteen is a great lunch time stop. They only lose a star from me, because their sushi is a bit blah. Mine tasted like watery wasabi for some reason, even though I wasn’t eating the wasabi.
But their rice bowls are delicious. The chicken teriyaki & chilli fried rice with prawns go down a treat at lunchtime! And the serving sizes are very generous.

1.5 stars? Ouch!
It really isn’t that bad at all.
You can’t expect high end cuisine when your meal is typically ready to be collected before you’ve processed your card payment. What they do well is very quick, good quality lunch hour Japanese meals. I wouldn’t recommend here for the evening — you can do much better with more time on your hands. But for a hot, tasty meal against the clock, you could do much worse.
I enjoyed their chicken teriyaki and the pork dumplings were as good as those you’d get in Wagamamas.

I’ve popped in twice over the past couple of months, whilst working nearby. It’s quite sparse and clinical inside, but it serves it’s purpose as a quick and easy lunch spot.
The choice of sushi boxes to take away seemed to be a bit limited (and the sushi pieces quite large…), but the hot food range seems wider. The best thing about the Japanese Canteen is that they do takoyaki (octopus balls)! And for a person still coming down from the high of a holiday in Japan, it sort of hits the spot — I’ve not come across another place in London (yet) that does takoyaki. And the takoyaki here are pretty good, in my humble opinion.
Hits the spot when you don’t want a sandwich or a salad for your lunch!

The food here is revolting, combined with awful service. Avoid.

I’ve made regular appearances at this place over the past months during the lunch hour, not out of choice mind you, but because the selection around my office is so limited. My coworkers and I have decided to limit our choice even further by banning this place henceforth.
I’ve lived many years in Asia and come from Australia which has good Japanese food. This is not Japanese food as I know it. In fact it’s not really food as I know it. I imagine field rations in the US army taste better than this crap. I’ve tried most of the items on the hot food menu, and they even smell wrong. My chilli fried rice today literally smelled like vomit. I didn’t even know that was possible, unless, of course, it actually contained vomit. That wouldn’t surprise me; several of my coworkers have found some weird «ingredients» in their food at various times, including a piece of wool that looked like it came from a sweater!
The quality of the ingredients is also poor, in particular the meat looks like it has come out of some sort of experimental vat. The chefs also seem to operate on the belief that the punters want as much meat as possible: my fried rice today was 50−60% chicken which was way too much. The restaurant’s dingy interior does nothing to dispel my belief that this is nothing but an experiment by the UK government to roll out soylent green to restaurants nationwide.
Not withstanding the above, it’s OK value for money which is why we kept coming back. Never again.