Chef Shinji Kanesaka holds two Michelin stars for his Tokyo restaurant, and the London outpost of Sushi Kanesaka was awarded its own Michelin star just seven months after it opened. Its 18-course set menu is the UK's most expensive at £420, with sake pairings adding at least another £150 to the bill. Kanesaka-san came to London for a few days to prepare his sushi for some of London's other Michelin-starred chefs and a few invited guests. I was lucky enough to be there, and wrote about it for Robb Report.
Service is more akin to a performance or ritual than a mere meal. Like a violin soloist, Kanesaka-san takes centre stage. The simplicity of a sushi chef's mise-en-place seems all the more reductive here given the monetary value of what Kanesaka-san is about to produce with his: just a pair of knives, a yukata rolling mat and a towel to dab his fingers. Assistants ferry the ingredients to him in hinoki trays and he does the manual labour: skinning, slicing, forming and folding almost everything you eat, with the battered Scottish lobster and seared Kobe beef cooked (very briefly) to one side.
The price and the reputation create an expectation of perfection. Nothing must fail, and nothing does. The nori is crisp and saline, the house blend rice from Yamagata unctuous and comforting. The fish they bear spans the range of taste and sensation, from the pure marine pop of salmon roe to the deep rich sweetness of five-hour simmered octopus. The sushi is presented in delicate single pieces, but over 18 courses you are unlikely to go hungry, particularly when those courses span the range of scale too: the smoked eel hand roll has an almost burger-like weight to it.
