The tasting menu is on the back foot. A decade on from the release of Chef’s Table, lime-biking metropolitans have swung firmly behind fine-casual dining. Guinness and brawn toast at the Devonshire; a pint of prawns at the Cow; quail shish at the Baring. These are our new cultural touchstones. A weekend trip to Mugaritz is no longer the marker of cultural supremacy it once was. To be sophisticated in 2024 London is to love the high and the low, to know where to get the best naga wings in Whitechapel and which grower champagne to pair them with. The tasting menu now smacks of poor taste, the crutch of the immature diner. The concept is simultaneously assailed by Six by Nico naffness on one side and Salt Bae vulgarity on the other.
Combine this with my asshole principle that I don’t eat Japanese food in London. I am fortunate to travel to Japan regularly for work where the quality and value on offer are extraordinary. Why bother with a £20 Tonkotsu when I can slurp elbow-to-elbow with salarymen in the shadow of my hotel in two months for less than the price of a Neck Oil? I don’t eat Japanese food in London for the same reason that I don’t go skiing in Amersham or hiking in Heathrow Terminal 4. It just doesn’t make any sense.
No surprise then that dinner at Roketsu for £190 a head (plus a £25 wagyu supplement) really doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time. An outmoded concept with a price tag that prompts my bank to inform me it qualifies for instalments.
Roketsu is London’s first ‘kaiseki’ restaurant, a dining format originating from Kyoto that consists of a carefully choreographed series of seasonal courses. No expense has been spared to recreate the authentic experience, with a custom wooden interior and bespoke serving plates made by Kyoto craftsmen.
Head chef and part owner Daisuke Hayashi previously worked at the Kikunoi group of restaurants in Japan, which boasts seven Michelin stars between its three locations. Yoshihiro Murata is the head chef at Kikunoi and the closest thing to a household name in kaiseki. “Commander Murata” as Hayashi-san described him to me, looms large over our evening at Roketsu. Murata-san likens kaiseki to ‘eating the seasons’, while Hayashi-san prefers the analogy of an amusement park. Indeed, much like a go on Nemesis at Alton Towers, Roketsu took my breath away.
We began with figs cooked in a white miso which came straight out of the Kikunoi coffee table book I had been lustily pawing through the night before, each page revealing a vaguely erotic still life of totally unidentifiable foodstuffs. Things got serious with the ‘hassun’ that followed, a tray of 10 exquisite, multi-element morsels that married British ingredients with kaiseki sensibility: Irish eel grilled skin-up with Tosa vinegar-pickled cucumber and rolled with needle ginger; a deep-fried pepper stuffed with pounded Cornish lobster and yam; a charcoal-grilled hand-dived Scottish scallop coated with bottarga power. I could go on. The course was even accompanied by a crayon drawing expertly rendered by Hayashi-san himself explaining each item. He had completely won me over.
And the earthly delights kept on coming. Simmered green plum with fresh crab and tomato jelly. Grilled lobster served with its own liver and piquant kinome leaves. And the coup de grace? A perfectly sweet and meaty lobster claw tempura dipped in nothing more than salt. It’s hard not to feel humbled enjoying such precise dishes as their contented creator looks on and even harder to describe them without falling into a dead-eyed Pat Bateman impression.
There are several tiers of drinks pairings starting at £95. I enjoyed a selection of sakes – many of which came from the Kikunoi mothership. One offered a classic banana confection tasting note. Another shone with a shimmering purity as it slowly trickled down my throat.
The name of the restaurant refers to a classical Chinese poem that reads ‘Once you catch the rabbit, the snare does not matter’. This might be the Japanese equivalent of the mountain climbing maxim I’ve heard, ‘a puddle is still water so long as it doesn’t make you sick’. If you have a magical evening, does the unfashionable tasting format and 22.9% APR on the credit card matter? At Roketsu, the answer might be no.
