WHEN it comes to fast food on the go Durham has not always had the greatest choice in the world.

And given my slightly irrational abhorrence of pre-packaged sandwiches, I’ve always found the options a bit limited. Not that a pie or sausage roll does not go down well with this reviewer, but sometimes it is nice to have something else.

So when Nudo Sushi Box popped up in the city centre some time ago I was keen to give it a go.

It’s a relatively small chain, mostly based in the North-East (it has four branches in Newcastle, one in Sunderland, one in Durham and a couple in Manchester), serving a variety of Japanese dishes.

From the start I’ll make it clear this is a fast food experience rather than gourmet fine dining.

It’s cafeteria style, so you have to select your food from chilled cabinets before taking it to the till to pay and this is a particularly no frills operation where cutlery or chop sticks comes with an extra charge.

I was dining solo for a pit stop lunch but still managed to find the time for a few different dishes.

Unfortunately for me the choice slightly cut into its fast food credentials (I don’t like to rush an important decision like lunch) but I’m willing to place the blame for that at my door.

Piling my plastic tray high, I went for a pot of miso soup with noodles and king prawns (£5.25), some salmon and tuna sashimi (£7.14), a rather intriguing green tea pudding (£2.39) and pomegranate juice (£1.79).

Everything is made to go, though you can sit down (on those slightly uncomfortable chairs that mean you don’t really want to linger for too long) and the food costs extra if you want to stay and eat.

Boxes come in several sizes and individual packets of various types of sushi are also available so there’s quite a lot of scope for different combinations of whatever you fancy.

I have to confess on past occasions I haven’t loved miso soup – it has a bit of a strange savoury taste I haven’t been able to get on board with.

But having decided to give it another chance I was pretty happy. It definitely took me a couple of spoonfuls to start enjoying it, but by the time I was half way down I was practically slurping it from the pot.

The prawns were massive and tasted nice and fresh so they gave the soup real substance and would have made a perfectly adequate lunch without my box of sashimi.

For those not au fait with Japanese food culture sashimi is thinly sliced raw fish (sushi by contrast is not raw fish, but refers to the vinegar rice which forms its basis).

Perhaps off-putting for some but I love it and this was brilliant. The slices were lovely and thick, the texture divine and the taste fresh.

There’s nothing fancy here (it comes with a small amount of shredded carrot and the classic condiments of soy, pickled ginger and wasabi) but that’s fine.

So far, so good but this is where things start to go downhill.

I’ll say at this point that I’m a self-confessed tea addict. At the last count my collection had more than 20 types and flavours. Black tea, white tea, green tea, red tea – I can’t get enough of it.

So I was intrigued by the green tea pudding and despite its rather off-putting murky colour I thought I would give it a go.

It looked like a set pudding and when I put it in my mouth was immediately reminded of a much-dreaded school dinner blancmange (that one was also a disturbing shade – but pink). To put it bluntly, the taste was just weird and the texture unpleasant.

After three spoonfuls I gave up and ate the ginger biscuit which came with it, which was very nice.

Having rejected the tea dessert I finished with the more traditional liquid form.

They have several nice sounding teabags (those posh ones where you can see the leaves) on offer, of which I went for some jasmine silver needle tea (£1.80).

This tasted delicious and I loved having a more exciting choice than elsewhere. They also offer water refills to give your bag another dunking.

However, the lid for the takeway option was absolutely terrible, resulting in me spilling very hot tea down my front and leaving me with a rather soggy dress for most of the afternoon.

The total bill of £18.37 is probably a bit pricey for a quick lunch but to be fair I had more food than I needed and the quality of the fish especially was great.

FOOD FACTS

Nudo Sushi Box, 85 North Rd, Durham DH1 4SJ

Contact: 0191 386 9081

Open: Mon-Sat 10am – 8pm. Sun 11am-5pm

Ratings (out of ten): Food 8, Value 8, Service 5, Surroundings 5