Cotswolds-based MasterChef finalist and former banker Andrew Kojima is opening his first restaurant, Koj, in Cheltenham next week on the back of successful pop-up and crowd-funding campaigns. He trialled the venture – and the Regent Street venue – as a pop-up in the run-up to Christmas, generating enough interest to raise £55,000 from more than 200 backers. […]
Chef and food-writer Gizzi Erskine has teamed up with ramen chain Tonkotsu to produce a Korean-inspired bowl to be sold for six weeks from next Friday, March 17. Her “Twisted Tonkotsu” includes Korean doenjang miso, gochuang chilli and kimchee, along with the house broth, pork belly and whole egg. Erskine’s fried chicken wings will be […]
⦿ In The Observer, Jay Rayner reviewed Aquavit, the St James’s offshoot of an “award-garlanded” Swedish restaurant in New York – “And, oh boy, check out that swagger.” It turned out to be “a proper Nordic noir thriller but for all the wrong reasons… It’s altogether more Trump Tower than Wallander. Everything is shiny and golden […]
The Shoryu chain of ramen bars has opened its first branch outside London, in Manchester’s Piccadilly. Shoryu specialises in tonkotsu ramen based on a 12-hour pork broth, a style developed in the Hakata district of Fukuoka city on the southwest Japanese island of Kyushu. Founder Tak Tokumine, a native of Fukuoka, made his first mark […]
One of central London’s longest-established Japanese restaurants, Matsuri in St James’s, has closed down after 23 years to be replaced by an updated new establishment from the same owner. The teppanyaki and sushi bar has inspired pretty solid feedback for its “authentic” feel from the Harden’s Survey in recent years, but little in the way […]
Chef Scott Hallsworth will usher in the new sake-brewing season at his Chelsea izakaya (Japanese gastro-pub) Kurobuta when he prepares a multi-course dinner in front of diners to serve with sake pairings on Saturday. October 1 is the traditional first day of production in Japan’s thousand-year-old rice-brewing industry, and has more recently been declared World Sake Day. […]
⦿ Jay Rayner in The Observer truffled out Umezushi, a 14-seater Japanese restaurant under a Manchester railway arch, with cooks from Korea, Spain and the Czech Republic, which he found “really very good indeed and, at the price, a bit of a miracle”. “Slices of wagyu, sensitively flamed, almost justify the £10 price tag that accompanies […]
With a name and menu that could be inspired by the many yummy mummies of Clapham High Street, MOMMI arrives in SW4. Blending South American and Japanese cuisine is nothing new on the London food scene (think Sushisamba and Amaru) but this newcomer also promises ‘the vibrancy of Miami and the eclecticism of Venice Beach’. MOMMI […]
From today (8 December) “memorable” City spot, Sushisamba, will join the ranks of a select few London restaurants serving genuine Kobe beef. Through an exclusive contract with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan and the Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association, chef Claudio Cardoso will now serve this sought after (and expensive) […]
