Tsukiji Sushi Mayfair
37 Conduit St, Mayfair, London, W1S 2YF
The Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo is a high energy and to the outsider a chaotic place, like Billingsgate on steroids. If you’re not careful you will be run down by one of the porters driving a forklift laden with fish at high-speed. You have the feeling that you’re a bit player in a high-speed piscine virtual reality game with the prize being one of the huge tuna being sold off in the early morning auction.
In comparison Tsukiji Sushi restaurant in The elegant Westbury hotel in Mayfair is an oasis of calm and beauty. With only twenty covers and an intimate red wood interior there’s an air of tranquility that insulates you from the high-end blandishments of Bond St. Maybe you shouldn’t buy those ridiculous £500 pair of heels that seemed so attractively cutting-edge in the shop?…
Malaysian head chef Show Choong creates a new menu each season highlighting organic ingredients. Having been invited to review it’s important to follow the primary food blogger’s commandment which reads “Thou shalt not take the piss with the ordering.” However in the interests of full disclosure you need to know about the £395 (for 2 people sharing) Kyodosakusei menu – 7 courses of top-end ingredient deliciousness accompanied by lashings of Dom Perignon 2006. However we were in no way hard done by opting for the Tasting Menu at £65 each and at £95 with matched sake.
Our first course was a plate of Buna Shimeji- grilled beech mushrooms with a subtle woody flavour enlivened by a piquant green sauce. We drank a floral Cherry Bouquet Sake Ginjo from the Dewazakura Brewery with pear, melon and red cherry notes.
Hamachi Usuzukuri – Yuzu Ponzu, was a clean-tasting minimalist plate of thin slices of yellowtail garnished with chilli, radish and spring onion.
We moved on to a mild dry Northern skies sake from the Akita Brewery with ripe peach notes. It was a great match with the rich, fatty tuna belly – Tataki Chu Toro with a Jalapeño salsa. It had a luscious mouth feel and was a real contrast to the previous dish. The next plate, an Octopus Carpaccio – with fennel, radish and a truffle mustard miso dressing – was a wonderful dialogue between the cool crunch of the fennel and radish and the bite of the dressing.
Black Dragon sake Junmai Ginjo- Kokuryu was described by the charming sake sommelier as dry, rich and welcoming which sounds like David Niven on a date. Can a sake be welcoming? I don’t know but it tasted good.
Yellowtail Maki roll with a spicy Jalapeño sauce had an unexpectedly crunchy outer layer of deep-fried rice adding a textural twist.
Moving onto our final sake, Fair Maiden Daiginjo- Hoyo, from Uchigasaki Brewery. With milk chocolate and wild mushroom on the nose and liquorice and star anise on the palate this was a complex sake that sat well with the restrained deliciousness of the Black Cod dish with its sweet Saikyo miso sauce.
Reaching this point in the meal I realised that I was still hungry but then the sushi cavalry arrived…Our final savoury plate contained five kinds of Nigiri Sushi – the Chef’s choice – with a delicately fragrant miso soup. Tuna, butterfish, snow crab, scallop and salmon were all beautifully prepared and really fresh with that simplicity of approach that marks out top-quality sushi.
With a final glass of luscious Plum wine arriving it was time for dessert. Green tea ice-cream came with a chocolate ripple and raspberry compote dominated by the raspberry. It was unexpectedly lovely.
A creamy citrus Yuzu sorbet with white chocolate and miso granola rice paper was the perfect end to the meal. Not too sweet and with a hint of salty-sweet crunch from the granola.
Top quality sushi is a rare treat and it was a pleasure to watch the chef plying his trade. Whether you’re a Mayfair regular or are looking for a special treat Tsukiji Sushi is worth a visit. It’s the opposite to the louder Nikkei-style places with the emphasis being on simplicity and quality. I just need to find someone to treat me to the Kyodosakusei menu now…
Sake tasting at Chisou
Sake tasting at Chisou Knightsbridge
31 Beauchamp Place, London, SW3 1NU
020 3155 0005/ knightsbridge@chisourestaurant.com
Chisou is a bijou Japanese restaurant at the bottom end of Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge. They are holding regular sake tastings to try to heighten awareness of the different styles and I have to say I was pleased to be asked along. As much as I have enjoyed drinking sake, rather embarrassingly I have never known what to order. Read my guest post for London Unattached at
Yum Yum Ninja – Review
Yum Yum Ninja Brighton
15-18 Meeting House Ln Brighton BN1 1HB
www.yumyumninja.com/01273 326330
Yum Yum Ninja
I spent my student years in Brighton. It was the late 70s/early 80s and I was social secretary at Sussex University. My life revolved around playing and promoting music, drinking cocktails with salacious names, and eating out as often as my student budget would allow. Brighton’s Lanes were a regular haunt for the latter two elements of my out-of-college education and somehow the sound of seagulls became intertwined with my bacchanalian baccalaureate.
Yum Yum Ninja
I was a bit nervous on being invited to sample the menu at Yum Yum Ninja and it wasn’t from a Tippi Hedrenesque fear of the local flying rodents. It was the restaurant’s name which was the cause for concern- it seemed a bit gimmicky. However on finding out that the people behind the venue had good form in Brighton, with the prize-winning Due South and seafood specialists Riddle and Finns already in their stable, my interest was certainly piqued. Finding the place was not easy as it is tucked away in a hidden courtyard, but once located it was clearly an attractive space with seating inside and out.
The menu majors in classics of Asian cuisine with tapas style and larger dishes. There is an emphasis on fresh locally sourced seafood and specific Bincho (barbecued skewers over charcoal) and Dim Sum menus.
Dassai Otter Festival sake
To celebrate our arrival Fiona from London Unattached and I started on a carafe of chilled Dassai Otter Festival sake (£6.50). It was delicious, well-balanced with a slight citrus note and was the perfect foil for our pre-lunch nibbles from the Ninja Snack Basket (£3).
Pickled cucumber and
Freshly made Tapioca and squid ink crackers
Pickled cucumber was cool and refreshing with only a mildly pickled taste.
Freshly made Tapioca and squid ink crackers were a revelation, crunchy and unctuous and given body by the umami richness of squid ink.
Kimchi
The Korean staple Kimchi was a chilli fest of spicy crunchy pickled cabbage.
Monkfish cheek skewers (3 FOR £3.75) from the Bincho menu were charcoal hot with the skin suitably charred.
Har Kouw
It would have been bad manners not to try some Dim Sum and the Har Kouw (3 FOR £3.95), which came with a mirin (sweet sake), soy sauce and rice vinegar dipping sauce were stuffed with plump prawns and had a suitably glutinous casing. It might be more authentic for the prawns to be minced but these had a good taste.
Tori Kara-age Chicken
Tori Kara-age Chicken (£7.95) was deep fried and battered and came with a lovely hot scotch bonnet mayonnaise.
Kyoto style aubergine
Kyoto style aubergine (£6) came in two ways, deep fried and roasted and really lived up to the cliche of being melt in the mouth.
Tempura of soft shell crab
Tempura of soft shell crab (£11) with a yuzu dressing had a terrific batter that allowed the crab flavour through and was complemented by the sour citrus dressing of the yuzu.
Oysters
Oysters (£2 each) with a Wafu (Japanese style dressing with oil and soy sauce) and Ponzu (Japanese dressing with citrus and soy sauce) dressing were fresh rock oysters with good flavour and given an oriental twist by the dressing.
Salt and pepper squid
(£8.95) had a breadcrumb panko batter and came with a great Octo vinaigrette, spiced up with garlic, ginger, chile and soy sauce, courtesy of David Chang’s New York hipster noodle hangout Momofuku.
Taster plate of desserts
To finish we had a taster plate of their desserts (£9.95 to share). Highlights were the Plum pie which was like a sexed-up pop tart and the lethal Toffee Wontons which probably should be banned for anyone over the age of 40.
When I was invited to review Yum Yum Ninja I wasn’t too excited about going-I had thought it would another identikit pan-Asian joint cashing in on the seaside trade. However the rather serious young men in the kitchen have clearly done their homework-the quality of produce, cooking and the variety in the menu create a pretty compelling offer at the price point that wouldn’t be out of place in Soho let alone Soho-upon-Sea.
The Hedonist was a guest of Yum Yum Ninja’s
