Staying healthy is such a minefield these days - first we're told a glass of red wine a day staves off heart disease, then we learn it'll soon ruin our livers.

Chocolate's properties as a life-saving super food or an obesity-inducing poison seem to change everyday, and someone even had the temerity recently to suggest a bacon sarnie could give you cancer.

If we're to believe all the warnings we read, then food is a very dangerous business.

Luckily, Oliver's not one to shirk his duty. But just to be on the safe side I thought I'd visit the only restaurant in Leeds which offers food that cleanses the liver, facilitates the digestive system and even helps prevent heat disease – maybe.

Little Tokyo prides itself on healthy eating - its tagline is 'the root and spice of healthy living'. The menu promises no GM, MSG or anything generally nasty and artificial. It even has a list describing the positive effects of some ingredients.

Wasabi helps prevent flu, lotus seeds regulate circulation, and we all know tofu prevents sore throats, don't we? So it was with a clean conscious and an empty stomach that Oliver traipsed through the door on a very rainy summer evening.

The decor makes a fairly generic, and slightly tacky attempt at transporting you to Japan. Waitresses wear a kimono as they usher you to irregularly-shaped wooden tables, complete with chopsticks and a strange rotating wooden menu.

The effect is finished with some Japanese garden architecture – complete with a Koi Carp pond that even has its own pagoda-style water feature.

You can make your own mind up whether you like the sound of gently running water to accompany your meal – I do, my friend didn't.

The food is of course Japanese. The menu is pretty large and only a little confusing. A whole seabass flambéed with teriyaki sauce seemed somewhat substantial to be listed as a side order, however healthy the appetite.

The slight language barrier meant that when we asked rather incredulously if the charcoal seabass was indeed a side, our waiter could only laugh at us and say "main".

Trying to find out a bit more about the options on the menu proved difficult, although the waiter was unstintingly cheery and polite throughout the whole process.

Wanting to try something authentic, I spotted the word 'traditional' in the description of the grilled eel teriyaki, and immediately asked the waiter if he'd recommend it as a particularly good dish. The response was something of a grimace before he pointed to the chicken. A refreshing honesty I'm probably very grateful for. The chicken won out.

It's worth noting that this is the first restaurant I've ever been in where exactly the same dish was listed twice on the menu – once as chicken teriyaki, the next as organic chicken teriyaki.

Being conscientious here is clearly optional. In the name of animal welfare, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and of course a better flavour, Oliver plumped for organic. Before any fowl was to appear though, we had starters to get through.

The dim sum sui mai – steamed pork dumplings – were tender, juicy little pockets, lifted by a sweet chilli dipping sauce. Tasty as they were, they weren't quite as good as the avocado tempura.

The unusual filling for the crispy batter worked excellently, especially with a smear of the wasabi ginger mayonnaise that came with it. Drawn in by the quirky name, our other starter was grilled lollipops.

The lollipops certainly looked the part – not those pokey little round things, but huge fat discs on a stick, the swirling kind Willy Wonka would sell. Except these were all one colour and made of onion – large slices of onion grilled on a stick to be precise.

Grabbing them and taking a bite after a dunk in the accompanying sauce was satisfying in a back-to-childhood kind of way. It wasn't quite so exciting on the palate though – they were after all simply pieces of grilled onion with a little soy sauce, which is exactly what they tasted like.

The largest section of the menu is devoted to bento boxes – a set meal in four parts comprising of rice, noodle salad, vegetable tempura and your choice of main.

This is what my organic chicken teriyaki came in, while my friend had the aforementioned sea bass. There is also a wide selection of noodle dishes, Japanese curries, sushi and sashimi.

The bento meal came in a special box, divided into five sections, the fifth containing a dipping sauce. The noodle salad was fresh and covered in an excellent dressing, and the tempura was crispy and light.

The rice comes with mishima (seaweed and fish flakes), which gives it a nice tang, although I had been hoping for slightly larger fluffier grains. The teriyaki chicken was dark, sticky and sweet as it should be although nothing extraordinary.

The seabass came with rice and was covered in a similar rich teriyaki sauce. The fish wasn't cooked badly, and there was lots of it, but the sauce proved a little overpowering in the end, leaving it all a little one-dimensional.

Puddings were much better. Two slightly unusual ice-creams – wasabi and green tea. The green tea ice-cream was subtle, unsurprisingly, with a refreshing undertone of the notoriously healthy drink (cleanses the liver and relieves high blood pressure – as if you didn't know).

The wasabi flavour, more surprisingly, was also subtle. It was in fact a revelation. Cold, mellow ice-cream melted in the mouth to give way to a gentle horseradish-flavoured wasabi kick. Definitely a highlight of the meal.

Drinks include a wide variety of fresh juices, herby teas and generally healthy options. Feeling there was already enough goodness in the food, Oliver went for a couple of bottles of Kirin beer instead.

There is a fairly decent wine list though with several served by the glass. A three course meal for two, with a couple of drinks each, came to a fairly reasonable £60. As the bill states, this is Japanese style: without a service charge.

Little Tokyo prides itself on its healthy approach and pure ingredients. They've also got an excellent selection for vegetarians – there are even vegetarian 'chicken legs' and veggie 'duck'. No comment. All in all the food is decent, but unremarkable.

The restaurant does offer something different with its Japanese theme, Koi carp and life-giving herbs. As I read, the black fungus in my dim sum may prevent heart disease. It may not of course, but it's not a bad excuse for prescribing a meal out.


Little Tokyo
24 Central Road,
Leeds
LS1
Tel: 0113 243 9090

www.littletokyo.co.uk

Opening hours:
Mon-Thur: 11:30am to 10pm
Fri-Sat: 11:30am to 11pm

Food *** (3 stars)
Value *** (3 stars)
Atmosphere *** (3 stars)
Service *** (3 stars)