London’s most expensive restaurant has its least visible presence. Sushi Kanesaka lies behind a dark, unmarked wooden door in Mayfair’s 45 Park Lane hotel, the exterior of which also fails to advertise the place. Further confusing matters, the entrance leads off a private room in the hotel’s Bar 45, whose dim, louche, ’50s Italian nightlife vibe clashes with the occasional appearance of a Japanese okami-san in traditional dress as she prepares for one of the evening’s two services. At which point bar patrons must wonder what, exactly, went into their Negronis.
But a restaurant doesn’t need shouty signage to grab passersby when there are only nine seats to fill and the set menu costs £420 (about $530). Chef Shinji Kanesaka holds two Michelin stars for his equally exclusive restaurant in Tokyo, and he has opened more in Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The London outpost of Sushi Kanesaka, his first outside Asia, was awarded its own Michelin star in February, just seven months after it opened. And while other London restaurants offer more expensive individual statement dishes, such as the roughly $800 Wagyu tomahawk at Nusr-Et, Kanesaka’s 18-course set menu is the U.K.’s priciest, with sake pairings adding at least another $180 or so to that bill.
Wild Canadian tuna, O-toro, and Chu-toro
Tina Hiller
Kanesaka-san came to London for a few days just as that Michelin star was announced, preparing his omakase menu for some of London’s other Michelin-starred chefs and a few invited guests, including Robb Report. While having your sushi prepared by the world-famous chef in Mayfair won’t be directly replicable by London diners, the experience inside the hotel restaurant (assuming you can snag a reservation) is otherwise very much the same as going to his original, equally tiny Ginza restaurant on which the London room is closely…