Ashura - Nara

Experience dining in a traditional Japanese-style room with floor seating. The hostess greeted us warmly and made us feel cozy after attending the fire festival on a cold March night. The food was delicious and satisfying. While some atmospheric music would have added to the experience, the attentive Japanese waiting staff ensured that our dining experience was undisturbed. Overall, a great dining experience.

The food is fine but the owner is not so warm to customers. There's not a single sound and it feels lonely and unwelcoming. I hope they add a good background music. But visually, the place looks nice (except that the tables are a bit too low). It's not much but they do have some options for no-onion type of vegetarians. Updated from previous review on Thursday August 13, 2015

After reading mixed reviews about this restaurant, we decided to give it a try when our first choice was closed for dinner. Located in a backstreet, the initial impression was that it was as cold inside as it was outside. Upon entering, we were greeted by a welcoming lady who instructed us to choose a table. Despite the lack of other customers, the coldness persisted, and the lack of background noise made for an eerie silence interrupted only by kitchen sounds. The menu indicated vegan options were on the back, while vegetarian options were on the front. We ordered samosas, a curry with rice, and a pasta dish, all of which were average in taste. The somosas were slightly oily and would have benefited from a dipping sauce. The atmosphere, combined with the silence, made for a less than pleasant dining experience. While the lady spoke some English and checked for allergies, we felt no desire to return unless absolutely necessary.

After seeing the reviews here on HappyCow, we decided to try this place, and found it easy enough down an empty side street. The interior is lovely if you are into buddhist paraphernalia; with all the random junk thrown around it is as if you walked straight into the living room of the head priest of some obscure local sect. The staff ignored us until we sat down at the counter in front of them. Then they asked us about egg and dairy and showed us the vegan menu, which turned out to be a pathetic joke: both English and Japanese versions were literally photocopies of the lacto-ovo vegetarian menu, with the non-vegan parts taped over or simply crossed out with a marker. Despite making a huge fuss about their vegan options, nothing was apparently replaced or reconsidered for vegan customers. What do you get when you subtract egg from an omelet? Ketchup, apparently, which is what the owners of Ashura tried to sell us for the same price as their ovo-vegetarian omelet. We settled for the curry, which was ok but nothing more, and neither spicy nor sweet. One of us made the mistake of paying extra for the fried gluten meat option, which turned out to be half a dozen cold chunks of non-seasoned gluten patty thrown on the plate, drenched in oil and hardly edible. Ordering the salad was our next mistake: it came more than twenty minutes after anything else we 'd ordered, and looked like someone had just bought it in a convenience store and thrown away the free dressing. All we got was a salt shaker. The samosa was an insult: a scrap of already-deep fried tofu stuffed with samosa dough, closed with a toothpick and badly fried again. Croquettes, served with plain soy sauce, were very bland but forgivable considering the rest of the menu. Others may have had better experiences and perhaps we were just unlucky. But considering the hostility of the staff, their complete lack of cooking skills and the insulting vegan menu , I hope that anyone in need of a vegan meal in Nara stays away from Ashura in favor of a better option.

The have an english menu: one side for food without eggs, milk or yoghurt. The other one containing these ingredients. We had a vegetable curry with brown rice, tofu croquettes and samosa. We enjoyed every bite of it. The hosts were very friendly and checked regularly if we could eat certain ingredients (eg seaweed)