Bookmark Sushi of Shiori for sheer raw pleasure

Success on a plate: chef Takashi Takagi puts the finishing touches to a dish at Sushi of Shiori
10 April 2012

Two sushi places this week; one in a street long known for Indian restaurants, the other in Chinatown. The march of raw fish and rice is unstoppable. I am slightly wary of writing about Japanese food. My only research at source was some years ago when I was asked to be the UK judge of an international cookery competition held in Tokyo.

There turned out to be various problems with this event. Only when I got there did I discover that it was sponsored by Nestlé at a time when all right-thinking people were decrying its sales of powdered baby milk in developing countries.

France fielded two judges so the French won in practically every category including "Presentation" where you might have thought the host country would excel. The Japanese men running the show had no idea what to do with the sole female judge. After studiously ignoring me for nearly all of the time, one forlornly invited me to have sex with him. I declined.

There was one astonishing, revelatory, high-wire meal in Kyoto to which the American judge who had organised it invited me, but otherwise the experience was, how shall we say, unedifying. But I have perspicacious friends well travelled in the East and one of them tipped me off about Sushi of Shiori (the word means bookmark).

The small premises — almost a cubby-hole — with a total of eight stools, three with a view of the preparation area, the other five looking out of the window onto Drummond Street, are apparently reminiscent of many restaurants in Japan that limit themselves to just one aspect of eating.

Booking, which is allowed, seemed eminently sensible; we rang the day before to ask for the omakase ("in the chef’s hands") menu and agreed to the minimum price of £30 per head for three.
A tall, slender, impassive chef and his short, trim, smiling wife were behind the counter.

The chef, Takashi Takagi, who comes from Kyoto, has worked in Kiku in Half Moon Street in Mayfair and also at Umu, the dazzlingly expensive Bruton Place restaurant that specialises in Kyoto kaiseki dining. He and his wife Hitomi met in London, went back to Japan and returned here because they missed it. I don’t know how they have the time.

The two of them, with no assistance, work Monday to Saturday lunch and dinner for a profit, which, when you factor in eight seats, cannot be much to write home about. Takeaway is available and I dare say there is brisk trade in that at lunchtime. Watching the chef is instructive pleasure when, with the precision of a watchmaker, he places precisely sculpted ingredients onto elegant glass and ceramic dishes. His wife, instead of handing them across the divide, as anyone else might, carries them through a curtain at the back, down a passageway at the side and formally proffers them.

Octopus with seaweed, cucumber origami, a dab of something mustardy and rice vinegar; scallops with a touch of black truffle; a still life of raw salmon with ponzu sauce; an array of sashimi with tangled threads of raw roots and curls of vegetables — we were advised that we could eat everything but the scallop shell; sushi looking like a box of chocs but in the colours of nature: it was a well-paced, totally gratifying meal.

In addition to a long list of nigiri, hosomaki, futomaki, bo-zushi, donburi and sashimi there were "new seasonal arrivals" from which we tried Iberico pork shabu-shabu salad and also Wagyu sushi because it was there. Both were excellent, the ribbons of pork having an intriguingly fugitive flavour. Home-made ice creams with a sesame and sunflower crisp are offered. Green tea was ace. Next time I’ll try black sesame.

We left with the memory of the riveting floor show of the chef paring daikon into a sheet of parchment standing beside a padded basket he apparently had made himself to keep the rice warm.

Sushi Of Shiori
Drummond Street, London, NW1 2PA

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