A girl has to eat, and this time it’s Japanese food! So check out my latest review on Tsunami Japanese Restaurant as I storm my way through a multitude of dishes. I’ve posted it as part of a blog exchange with fellow food blogger, Londoneater.
So to read all, and savour the yummy dishes, click here ‘Tsunami Restaurant Review’.
And be sure to come back here on Wednesday to check out Londoneater’s post.
Happy eating!
When a restaurant boasts the name of Alan Yau behind it, one cannot help but have high expectations. Alan Yau is the man synonymous with the success of Hakkasan and Yauatcha, both Michelin star holders, and other well-known establishments such as Busaba Eathai, Wagamama and the recently-opened gorgeous Milanese bakery, Princi. Such is his Midas touch, it seems only just to have high expectations when stepping through the door of one of his restaurants. So it was that I went to dinner at Sake no Hana (Flower of Sake) last night, another Alan Yau offering, giddy with the weight of expectation. Add the money of owner Evgeny Lebedev, son of a Russian oligarch, and a location in the heart of Mayfair, and you would seemingly have a blend to induce one huge success story.
But for the privilege of such a pedigree, a monied backdrop and said location, comes a price. Case in point, the beer. £9.50. Yes you read right, nine pounds and fifty pence. Ok, it was good beer, Suntory premium malt (a winner of the Grand Gold Medal at Monde Selection for Three Consecutive Years), and admittedly not a kind you might readily obtain in London. But still: £9.50? It was the same price as my cocktail, the ‘Gandara Dream’ (Kumquats, Diplomatico Reserva rum, Don Julio Silver tequila, Umeshu plum liqueur, almond sugar and green tea), which as delicious as it was, was more ice than drink.
Softshell crab salad with wasabi sauce
We started with a softshell crab salad with wasabi sauce (£10.50), although we had tried to start with two different scallop dishes: the prawn, scallop and lotus root katsu (£8), and the scallop and spring onion in miso mustard dressing (£8.50), only to be told that both the scallop dishes were unavailable. Huh? It was barely 7pm, and with Sake no Hana’s pricing levels and upmarket persona, this was all too disappointing.
A few months ago I debated the merits of buying this smashing pair of Prada sunglasses. I mention them because sunglasses rarely look good on me and these ones did. However it came at a price of course, and so whilst my foxy inner angel in fishnet stockings and slinky stilettos went “go, go, go”, my sensible inner angel in her matronly outfit then counterattacked by asking if I could actually afford them. ‘Sensible’ eventually won over, but months later I kept wishing I had succumbed to my inner yearnings.
Sitting at dinner at Inamo, I was again washed over with that wave of “I wish I had bought those damn sunglasses”. Playing with the table, I was being blinded by the kaleidoscope of ever changing patterns and colours that were flashing up at me from this new toy every two minutes.
To explain, Inamo is a restaurant with an interactive ordering system. The menu is displayed through the table and once you’ve decided what you want, you order through the table. There are also games, even a function to allow you to call for a taxi home, and you can also choose the patterns and colours of your table to design your own personal look. But we were being all too clever, we were. We had decided on the random select mode and our table therefore changed patterns and colours every two minutes. So really, I only had us to blame for being blinded, by of all things, a table.
Our shiny table on random shuffle