Taku Mayfair review: Strict omakase restaurant is a show-stopper
Some restaurants hook and cook you before you even reach your seat.
At Walthamstow’s SlowBurn you walk through a working jeans factory, passing industrial washing machines and stacks of denim en route to your table. Sessions Arts Club has you enter its grand former courthouse through what looks like the stone-hewn corridor of a castle, asking you to climb a claustrophobic stairway before eventually parting the velvet curtain that reveals its incredible dining room.
Taku takes the opposite approach, with a frontage so studiously discreet you couldn’t possibly stumble across it by mistake. And even if you did, it would do you no good – the door remains locked, open only to those already in the know; a brave move in this economy but one that reflects Taku’s absolute confidence in the ability of its omakase menu to find, through a process of cultural osmosis, its market.
There are rules, too. When I booked I was told I should arrive five minutes ahead of the allotted time (there are two sittings a day). The seat would be held for 10 minutes, after which the door would remain locked. And as this is an omakase restaurant – literally ‘I’ll leave it up to you’ in Japanese – I was told it would be seen as an unforgivable affront to request sundries such as soy sauce (to be fair, Gordon Ramsay once kicked someone out of his restaurant for asking for ketchup).
Anyway, once that door is unlocked – and promptly locked again behind you – you find yourself in a nondescript, two metre squared reception area, where your name is checked against the list; not a long list, given there’s only space for 16 diners. I was pointed towards a white cotton curtain, through which you enter this little sliver of Tokyo-upon-Mayfair. Stone walls, pine counters, more chefs than diners, silently slicing vivid blocks of tuna that probably cost as much as some London flats.
The rise of casual dining has been a wonderful, democratising thing but there’s something thrilling about a place that makes you jump through so many hoops. And jumping through those hoops is worth it, provided you’re happy to part with a frankly eye-watering sum of money. The basic menu – I use the term loosely – will set you back £300, with a fancier version costing £400. Before booze. In return you’ll get one of the most memorable evenings in a restaurant I’ve experienced in over 10 years writing about London restaurants.
This is the type of fastidious cuisine rarely seen on these shores (three of the top four cities for Michelin stars are Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, with only Paris breaking the Japanese hegemony), with a hushed, almost religious reverence for the process of preparing, masticating and digesting organic matter.
Taku chef-patron chef Takuya Watanabe spent a decade behind the counter at Paris’s lauded Jin before opening up shop on Albemarle Street last year, earning a star in just four months. And he certainly isn’t going to let user error ruin all his hard work. Each dish – there are 20 in total – is delivered with strict instructions. Pieces of sushi – the rice shaped before your eyes, the fish sliced by men (all men) who have trained for decades for the privilege – are to be consumed within 10 seconds, to preserve the optimum temperature. Dishes requiring several bites come with a suggested eating order. Even the choice of utensil is prescribed: “Perhaps sir would prefer to eat this one with the spoon?”
But my god is it worth it. From the first ceramic mug of pungent mussel soup it’s clear this is special. Largely sourced from the UK, this is fish (only fish; veggies need not apply) elevated to the position of idolatry. Two-week soy marinated tuna is a glossy, bruise-red rectangle that genuinely melts in the mouth (it’s hard to describe without resorting to cliche); Cornish turbot sashimi comes with a tiny tip of asparagus that somehow elevates asparagus beyond any I’ve eaten before.
There is Hampshire trout and Portuguese grouper, sea bass and squid and scallops and lobster, all… perfect.
Some dishes come on neat little earthenware plates, others are handed to you directly from the chef, a strangely intimate gesture in these post-Covid times. People barely conversed, making the experience feel even more intimate than 16 diners would suggest.
And it goes on and on, never rushed, always leaving you craving just one more bite. Taku isn’t a quick, satisfying shag, rather an hours-long tantric sex session that even Sting would be proud of. You wouldn’t want to do it every day but, bloody hell, I’ll be thinking about it for years to come.
- To book visit the website here