I tried the UK’s most expensive menu where every course comes as one bite
It dawned on me at bite number six, a morsel of lightly vinegared rice topped with yari-ika (squid) and pearls of Beluga caviar. It was hammered home minutes later by a silken mouthful of otoro, the luxuriously fat-marbled belly of bluefin tuna (bite number nine), that the sushi I once knew – and liked in a lunchtime, grab-and-go context – will never be the same again.
Sushi Kanesaka, the wildly expensive, gorgeously tranquil, nine-seat omakase restaurant that opened in Mayfair’s 45 Park Lane hotel last summer, has ruined it. At £420 a head for the no-choice menu (trusting the chef is key to omakase, which literally translates as “I leave the details up to you”), before even a sniff of sake or acknowledgement of the exceptional service, it is the most expensive restaurant in the UK. But then, as the Good Food Guide’s expert inspector wrote, “it is undoubtedly the best-quality sushi experience available in the UK right now.”
Last week chef Shinji Kanesaka dropped in to visit his fledgling London outpost – no easy task given he has to close his Tokyo restaurant, also called Sushi Kanesaka, when he is away – and I was invited to join him. The London site had just won a Michelin star so there were backs to be patted, not least that of head chef and Kanesaka’s protégé, Hirotaka Wada. There was a rush for seats at the sleek counter. Extra lunch services were added. “Busy week?” I ask the neat-suited restaurant manager, Yasushi Nagashima. “Very,” he replies warmly, showing no sign of flagging.
Taking his place in the kitchen, Kanesaka-san reaches over to serve me the otoro nigiri. He slices the tuna flesh diagonally across the grain and through the ripples of belly fat, drawing the long blade with single, sure actions. He moulds the rice in his hands with second-nature movements, presses the fish on top. The menu is never the same; if not tuna, mackerel or squid, it might be skate, grouper or snapper.
The proportion is exact and the lightest brush of soy sauce, whisper of grated yuzu, dab of fresh wasabi makes the mouthful sing. This is the Edomae style of sushi, the most traditional and unadorned. It is exquisite. “Eat,” Kanesaka-san insists; sushi is best when made, given and eaten in moments. “More wasabi?” The nose-pricking levels remain tame – I’d like more – but fresh wasabi is pungent rather than fiery like commercial pastes.
For sake, diners choose a pretty, hand-cut glass from a display box and it’s filled with the liquor by sake master Saki Takase, sometimes fresh and fruity, sometimes savoury, depending on what it accompanies. There’s a smooth chawanmushi (egg custard) with Cornish crab and scallop, and an umami-laden grilled eel hand roll with a sweet soy-sake-mirin marinade and refreshing cucumber. Grilled Kobe wagyu is mesmerisingly good: two slices of the top A5-grade beef served with just a pinch of sea salt and a dot of wasabi. These are single bites but my word, they’re filling. Dud notes are scarce: a miso soup is pleasant but nothing more, while a negitoro maki roll (diced fatty tuna with spring onions) is awkwardly big for one mouthful.
And the rice? “In Japan, those who know sushi focus on the rice,” says Kanesaka-san, who buys a variety grown in Japan’s northerly Yamagata province. “It’s like French cuisine where the focus is on the sauce which is the chef’s work. Rice is often the identity of a sushi restaurant.”
We finish with fruit. Strawberries are a winter crop in Japan but to eat one here in February feels odd, however perfect the specimen and especially when coated in red bean paste and gelatinous mochi. The luxurious Crown musk melon, however, is miraculously honeyed. It’s not just everyday sushi that’s spoiled by Sushi Kanesaka, it’s my fruit bowl, too.
Kanesaka-san, 52, has worked in kitchens since he was 18. His flagship Tokyo restaurant has two Michelin stars and he has places in Singapore and Hong Kong, but his drive to improve remains as keen as his knife blade. “The training is daily, constant,” he explains. “Each new day must be the best version. I should never look back and feel the best day was in the past.” He’s tough on himself. “We are still at the starting point. We aim to progress to the second and third steps.” Michelin’s rarest accolade, the trio of stars, clearly twinkles in his dreams.
The UK could do better, too. Kanesaka-san equates London’s current sushi scene to that of Singapore when he opened there – in 2010, so there’s a sting in the comment. He quickly tempers it: “Obviously, there are other cuisines that are more progressed [in London]. French cuisine is at a much higher level than in Japan where Western cuisines are often butchered and lose their original form.” He rates the “impressive” Pavyllon, Yannick Alléno’s modern-French Mayfair restaurant, which won a Michelin star this year with similar speed to Sushi Kanesaka.
Sushi Kanesaka is from a different restaurant dimension, unreachable except by the tiniest number of people. I won’t forget the experience, but nor will I squirt that capsule of soy sauce over my chiller-cabinet sushi with such gusto as before. It just won’t be the same.
