Seeing the film Johnny English recently reminded me to try out our local YO! Sushi for lunch. Rowan Atkinson, who plays the part of the clumsy spy was, like me, a novice to Japanese food so the colourful dishes whirring past on the conveyor belt were a mystery to us both.

The good news was my companion and I could order hot dishes from the menu which meant at least we wouldn’t end up eating some strange sea creature like Johnny did and choking while at the same time as trying to impress his glamorous guest.

His hilarious moment was catching his tie in the conveyor so, being a bit of a Johnny character myself, I tucked my tie carefully into my jacket just in case I ended up taking an impromptu circular tour of the restaurant.

The system is that each dish is priced according to colour, so the cheapest is green at £1.70 going up to grey bowls for £5.

To order from the hot menu you press a red button in the middle of the table and, despite my distrust of anything remotely high-tech, I was surprised to by how fast the cheerful waitress arrived to take our order.

I started with miso soup, a light soy bean broth with seaweed, tofu and spring onions. It was very tasty and costs just £1.75 and you can have as many refills as you want so is highly recommended if you are on a tight budget during these troubled times.

Our appetites whetted, we then both ordered a number of dishes to share starting with chicken and salmon teriyaki, both grilled in a sweet sticky soy sauce. The four pieces of salmon were a generous size but the chicken strips were a bit too scrawny for our liking. Perhaps they make the pieces deliberately small so that it is harder for the chopstick novices to avoid making idiots of themselves.

Things improved with the chicken and prawn katsu dishes which were fried in breadcrumbs and the prawns were our definite favourites. It was shame then that there were only three of them so I had to generously offer the extra one to my companion who generously decided not to split it with me.

I made up for it with the prawn yakisoba, fried noodles in a spicy sauce, and chicken in a spicy sushi rice.

I am not sure which was the spiciest but it had me gulping down several glasses of soft drinks in a manner which would have made Rowan Atkinson proud.

I made a note to myself to order a mild version of these dishes next time and a plain rice rather than so many fried dishes.

Japanese food is meant to be healthy but I seemed to have managed to find the fatty ‘Britanese’ versions which no doubt are lacking in authenticity, if not taste.

Next time I might be brave and order some of the more adventurous dishes, such as octopus or barbequed eel.

My colleague liked the look of the desserts morello cherry and chocolate cake and the chocolate and hazelnut shortbread which were passing us by on that very tempting conveyor.

She decided to opt for the fruit but then we realised we simply couldn’t eat any more.

The cheerful sous chef came and sat nearby and happily explained what dishes he was eating and it gave us an idea of what we could have had had we really known what we were doing.

That said, YO! Sushi! had proved an ideal place to meet for a quick business lunch as the service was fast and efficient and all of the staff very pleasant.

And the best part of the experience was that when all of the coloured dishes were counted and we paid at the counter our bill came to just over £30, including four soft drinks, which should keep the bank manager on side.