The Guardian
Grace Dent visited a spendy Japanese restaurant in Moseley whose black walls, floors and tables gave it an air of “1980s MFI showroom doing international playboy lair”. The pompous promise of a dining experience that ‘transcends the ordinary and becomes a journey of discovery, flavour, and connection’, plus some determined upselling from an eye-rolling waiter, put her on her guard before she had tasted anything.
Sure enough, the cocktails Grace ordered failed to arrive, while the sushi platter that opened the meal was “pretty indistinguishable from the freshly rolled options at Waitrose”. Main dishes were better: a piece of “rather nice fish in a buttery miso sauce” and “three deliciously plump, pink pepper-seasoned lamb chops with a few smears of yoghurt and some spindly heritage carrots, which owed more to Bengal than to Tokyo”.
The ‘baked Mount Fuji’ dessert turned out to be a chunk of matcha ice-cream in sticky meringue with a shot of whisky poured over and set alight. “After the flames abated, the plate – black, of course – was a mound of singed, still moist meringue mix sitting on some melted ice-cream and a puddle of whisky. You really can’t put a price on that kind of excitement, although in this case it came to £12.”
Grace Dent - 2025-03-09
