“We’re not just bringing what we did in Malta,” Lifestyle Group CEO Robert Debono says. “We’re building on it, evolving and adding to the conversation London is already having about food.”
Debono’s group has just opened a London outpost of Aki, the Japanese restaurant it launched in Valletta in 2020. It has spent £15 million transforming a Grade II-listed banking hall into an 80-cover dining room, preserving its soaring ceilings and historical character while layering in luxurious kimono fabrics. Designer Francis Sultana, inspired by an exhibit of Japanese screens at The Met in New York, integrated plaster trees, cloud motifs and references to traditional screen painting. “The result feels grand but also welcoming, and timeless without being formal,” Debono says.
Downstairs is Kiyori, a bar in the former vault that recreates the lively nocturnal atmosphere of clubs in 1920s London, Paris and New York. Cocktails pull in Japanese ingredients: one combines Japanese rum with yuzu, lime juice and yuzu foam, while another builds Japanese vodka, green tea vermouth and Japanese absinthe on a matcha-infused ball of ice. “Kiyori lets us show another side of Aki. Upstairs is about dining, focus and detail. Downstairs is about energy, playfulness and staying a little longer than you planned,” Debono says.
The kitchen is inspired by the cuisine of Kyoto, where “there’s a quiet discipline in letting ingredients speak for themselves, using restraint and precision rather than overcomplication”, says executive chef Mamadou Sankare (ex-Roka).
Sankare follows a farm-to-table philosophy, anchoring carefully sourced ingredients with techniques of fin-to-tail cooking and fermentation using nukadoko (fermented rice bran). These “reflect two values I hold deeply: respect and depth”. In practice this means honouring the whole catch, drawing out everything from delicate sashimi to umami-rich bones and crisp skins. Fermentation, meanwhile, transforms vegetables, giving them gentle sourness and rich savoury complexity. “The flavour profile becomes one of contrasts,” Sankare says, “clean and pure, but also earthy, tangy and profoundly satisfying.” This combination of techniques “allows us to create dishes that are rooted in Japanese tradition”.
The menu spans sushi, robata (charcoal-grilled seafood, meat and vegetables) and kushiyakì (grilled skewers). Highlights include the tuna tartare with puffed brown rice, aged soy and caviar served on an enormous ice cube, and the hay-smoked scallop with tofu and fennel cream, fuji apple tosazu (citrus soy vinegar) jelly, myoga (ginger flower) and hanaho (shiso flower).
The kitchen also draws from its 80 in-house micro farms. “It allows us to grow rare Japanese herbs and [offer] flavours that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to source here in London,” says Sankare. The natto (fermented soybean) and yuzu-marinated lamb, for instance, is dressed with umeboshi (pickled plum) and a herb miso that makes full use of the farms’ produce.
While Sankare draws inspiration from Kyoto’s cuisine, the aim isn’t to mimic it but to bring “a sense of Kyoto’s mindfulness and purity of expression into the energy and diversity of London”. And the influence of Malta will still be felt.
“Japanese cuisine is at the heart of Aki,” says Debono, but the restaurant also cultivates that “sense of warmth and generosity we grew up with [in Malta]. Things like Maltese honey are a nod to that – but it’s more about the feeling.”
Aki
1 Cavendish Square, W1G 0LA
07402847957
Hours:
Mon to Sun midday–midnight
