The world has come a long way, and I with it, since I was taken to my first Japanese meal in 1995 as a pupil barrister. I tried hard to look insouciant about the whole thing but almost certainly did not succeed as honestly it was so alien and baffling. I just wanted to go to Spaghetti House. The opening of Taro round the corner from my flat in Soho helped gradually to ease me out of ignorance, and then in New York I lived opposite the original Nobu which had just opened in Tribeca and I was properly hooked on Japanese cuisine (even if of the Peruvian fusion sort). Since then I have eaten Japanese food at hole in the wall places through to palace hotels, with a personal favourite having been Endo at the Rotunda.
But nothing prepared me properly for dinner at Sushi Kanesaka.
Now you will doubtless have heard of these small, elusive, exclusive and definitely expensive Japanese omakase restaurants that have spread out from their home in Japan and can be found (but not often and not easily) in some of the great cities around the world. Sushi Kanaesaka is one of these, albeit one with some considerable heritage and the original in Ginza is considered by some as the greatest of all Japanese restaurants. The London branch is the only one outside of Asia.
Sushi Kanesaka was founded byShinji Kanesaka in Tokyo. He training at the legendary Kyubei in Tokyo where at the tender age of 23 he became their youngest employee to be allowed to serve sushi to customers. Five years later he left to open his own restaurant, Kanesaka, and has gone on to train some chefs that are now famous in their own right, such as Takashi Saito. His main Kanesaka restaurant holds two Michelin stars and has done so since 2018. The head chef here in London is Hirotaka Wada, who previously worked as head chef at Sushi Kanesaka at the Palace Hotel in Tokyo. Yes, that Palace Hotel in Tokyo.
Sushi Kanesaka at 45 Park Lane (past of the Dorchester Collection) opened on the 1st July 2023, offering an omakase only sushi experience for nine customers each of which is seated at a counter in front of Mr Wada, although it does have additional space in a private room for four people. Which is not a lot of people. So if the first clue that this is going to be beyond special is the pedigree of Kanseaka and Wada and the second is the price (I’ll come to that) then the third is that this whole places serves only a few people at each serving.
And in case there was any residual doubt (how many clues do you need!!) then there is the place itself. We were welcomed at the door of 45 Park Lane and shown upstairs where we were handed over to Kanesaka’s staff. The dining room is beautifully spare and elegant, with pale hinoki wood, soft light and shoji screens. This is the real deal, with a sushi counter made from a single block of cedar wood, and vases supplied by ceramic artist Shiro Tsujimura.
Yet London is not short of beautiful spaces in which to eat, so the real question is how was the food.
To explain, the menu is, with the odd exception, based on sushi rather than wider Japanese cuisine, but this is where the restaurant took everything to another level. I simply did not know that sushi was capable of tasting like this (and I love sushi). It is simple proof that if you source the finest ingredients, such as their own rice blend from Japan’s Yamagata Prefecture, and use the skills of utter precision then the effect is sublime.
To give just one example, there was sushi of yariika, a rare and expensive squid known for its sweet flavour and soft texture, with Beluga caviar. We watched the chef making periodic neat incisions in the thin strips of raw squid over the hour or so before that sushi was served. The result was squid that had almost the texture of condensed milk but with a sweet flavour of the sea that then exploded into the richness of the caviar. I cannot do justice to how extraordinary that one piece of sushi tasted.
The squid was a single piece of sushi, as were many of the more than twenty courses that we were offered. The initial appetiser provides another great example: Cornish king crab with beluga caviar supplied from Kaviari, interspersed with a little scallop, where again the sweetness of the crabmeat offset the brininess of the top-quality caviar.
There was a series of sushi that explained tuna better than a book ever could with, for example, the lean red meat of marinated akami followed by semi-fatty chutora, through to otoro, each from a top grade Spanish tuna and sat on lightly vinegared rice. The dishes kept on coming from the more comprehensible Octopus sunomono to Hata with Iriizake sauce – a sandfish from Akita marinated with an apricot and sake sauce – mind-boggling stuff, and all delicious, and all so very evidently using only the finest ingredients as with these small, perfect dishes there is simply no hiding place.
There were hand rolls, grilled Kobe beef of exquisite tenderness and a very clever dish which mated a piece of lobster with a shitake mushroom into a yin-and-yang circle of sea and earth, before concluding as tradition dictates with tamago, an egg omelette.
Fruit was served as dessert, and was imported from Japan to remind everyone that Japanese fruit really is the finest in the world, with melon and strawberries that almost make you weep that you will rarely taste such perfection again.
I need also to mention the sake, which the excellent sommelier curated to match the quality of the food and in particular a naturally fermented Akashitai Junmai Ginjo sparkling sake. Unlike anything I have drunk before, and several bottles of which have been sourced for my own collection.
So the £420 a head question that has to be asked is “was it worth it”? And for once the answer is simple and unequivocal. This was one of the finest meals I have ever eaten. No pyrotechnics, no sleight of hand and no surprises other than that ingredients you think you know can be more perfect than ever you thought possible. It is the antithesis of “new” being a synonym for “great”.
I somehow have to go back. And you have to go, even if only once.
Sushi Kanesaka, 45 Park Lane W1K 1PN – Sushi Kanesaka – +44 (0)20 7319 7466 – reservations@sushikanesakalondon.com
Tuesday to Saturday 6pm & 8pm sittings
Closed from 2nd to 17th August
david@greencastlemediagroup.com
