Japanese cuisine has never been better represented in London. Whether you’re looking for the cozy charm of a Kyoto sushi-ya at Sushi Tetsu, luxurious plates of A5 wagyu beef and black cod at Dinings SW3 or sashimi with a view at Bisushima, there has never been a better time to explore the food of Japan here in the capital.
The latest name to add to this roster of restaurants is Sumi. It’s not every day that we make the trip all the way out to Westbourne Grove (Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Bank anymore), but the promise of a menu created by Japanese chef-of-the-moment Endo Kazutoshi was too much to resist. Kazutoshi shot to prominence in early 2019 when he opened Endo at The Rotunda, a counter-top omakase-style restaurant, that quickly gained a Michelin star and a reputation for offering some of the finest sushi anywhere in London.
Kazutoshi, a third-generation sushi master, came to London in 2007 and later ran the sushi section at the well-respected Zuma restaurant before finally going solo. Alongside his impeccable technique – transforming the pressing of nigiri sushi into a near-balletic art form – his contacts book is brimming with some of the finest suppliers in the UK and beyond. In other words, this is a master craftsman working with the best materials available. The results speak for themselves.
Sumi is more casual than its high-end sister restaurant Endo at The Rotunda, but at its heart the no-frills focus on superior ingredients and technique shines through once more. There’s a little something extra thrown in for good measure. Sumi is named after Kazutoshi’s mother, and the bustling open kitchen, lively 60s soundtrack, and scandi-meets-Japanese interior has a heart to it that one imagines is a callback to the chef’s family home. Don’t get me wrong, it’s achingly stylish with its veil of pale wood panelling and gold-accented fixings, but there’s a warmth to the space befitting of any good neighbourhood restaurant.
We visit during a busy Thursday evening service where every table is full, and the kitchen is throwing out clay pots filled with beef and rice, billowing steam as they go, and pressing nigiri at an impressive rate of knots. It’s the kind of place where you know something good is going on from the moment you walk through the door.
Jodi Hinds
Jodi Hinds
What to eat?
At the helm is head chef Yasuda Akinori, who worked alongside Kazutoshi for many years at Zuma before going on to be head sushi chef at the now-closed Yen restaurant. In short, a very safe and capable pair of hands.
The menu is divided into starters, sushi, sashimi, temaki (sushi hand rolls), and main dishes. Really, how you tackle things is up to you and your stomach. My party and I settled on a smattering of dainty starters – dainty being the operative word, they’re not the largest – followed by a host of sushi and extra helpings of the fantastic temaki.
Several of the sushi options were available served in the ‘aburi’ style, where the fish is seared with a careful lick of a blowtorch just to bring out the flavour of the fat. This was a particular smash hit with the otoro or ‘fatty tuna’ where the oozing richness of this highly desirable cut of tuna was elevated to eye-flutteringly delicious levels.
The star, however, is probably the temaki rolls. Combining sushi rice, fish and pickled vegetables, and served in a U-shaped piece of nori seaweed, this delicious hand roll is something of a speciality of Kazutoshi’s family, and it shows. My toru-taku temaki included more of that fabulous fatty ‘otoro’ tuna, accompanied by smoked and fermented mooli radish, chives and soy – and, just for good measure, I also requested a little ikura (salmon roe) for an added luxurious note. It was so good, I ordered seconds.
As for the mains? The table next to us plumped for the beef gohan – a delicious-sounding claypot of rice and beef that released a wonderfully aromatic pillar of steam as the lid was ceremonially removed – but we’d come here to sample Kazutoshi and Akinori’s sushi proficiency, so we resolved to try the beef on a subsequent visit.
What to drink?
Sake is probably the order of the day should you consider yourself a purist when it comes to your sushi. We enjoyed a bottle of the Masumi Okuden Kantsukuri Junmai sake, which comes from the highly respected Miyasaka brewery in the mountainous Nagano prefecture. It’s roundedness, subtle flashes of sweetness, with a dry finish was the perfect accompaniment to the superb nigiri and temaki.
Were we in a more playful mood, however, the cocktail list would have been an excellent port of call, thanks to its clever use of complementary flavour profiles that would surely have paired nicely with the Japanese cuisine. The Milky Way, for example, is a kind of whisky-based milk punch that blends Jasmine-infused Nikka Coffey malt whisky with rhubarb, lemon, and soda water. Or you can bypass the cocktails entirely and focus on one of the 11 Japanese whiskies available to order by the glass.
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Will it bankrupt me?
Great ingredients don’t come cheap, sadly. Sushi is £8-16 a piece and the same goes for the temaki. Is this expensive? Yes, I suppose it is, if (god forbid…) YO! Sushi or Itsu is your frame of reference. But in comparison to some high-end Japanese establishments where you have to pay upwards of £150 for an omakase sushi tasting menu to get through the door, the option of popping into Sumi for a few pieces of excellent nigiri before moving onto a main dish (£16-55) is really quite appealing.
If value is your thing, you’re probably looking in the wrong place, but if you’re looking for Japanese cuisine without having to order a full tasting menu, this might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Anything else to note?
Once you’ve tried Sumi, it might be time to level up to its big brother Endo at The Rotunda. Here, you’ll get to watch Katzutoshi-san working up close and personal. The 20-course £195 omakase menu shows the full spectrum of the sushi master’s abilities. To say it’s a joy is a ludicrous understatement.
