“Both of us, as native Japanese Londoners, have always felt a frustration towards the kind of Japanese restaurants that exist in London, which are all quite sushi-centric,” Yuji Shimokawa Kelly tells Broadsheet. “Sushi is delicious and it’s easy for people to understand, but the food that we grew up eating, that triggers nostalgia for us, isn’t sushi. And that’s not the food that excites us.” Now, Londoners are getting a taste for what’s exciting Shimokawa Kelly and Robin Kosuge, joint head chefs at Nakimushi, the latest restaurant by Chris D’Sylva, founder of Dorian and Eel Sushi, among others.
The multi-level restaurant, which is a few minutes’ walk from Notting Hill Gate, offers two different sides of Japanese cooking. There’s the “hot food” (“the term coined by our boss Chris to describe anything that isn’t sushi”, Shimokawa Kelly says) and ramen. The two chefs have form in working with D’Sylva in Notting Hill – Shimokawa Kelly led Urchin and Kosuge headed up Robin’s Ramen, both residencies at D’Sylva’s Supermarket of Dreams. During lunch, it’s all about big bowls of ramen. Come evening, petite versions of the ramen remain on the menu, accompanied by a slate of dishes that run from snacks to mains. “We’re doing all disciplines of Japanese food together on a menu where you can have ramen as the crown jewel,” Shimokawa Kelly says.
Like the rest of the menu, Kosuge’s ramen reflects his London upbringing – rather than using imported ingredients to faithfully replicate the tonkotsu and shoyu ramen of Japan, which is what tends to be served in London, he’s incorporating ingredients from closer to home. Broth is flavoured with different salts from the UK, France and Italy, as well as chicken from France’s Basque region. He’s also bringing in influences from growing up with a Polish mother. “It’s a hybrid of a classic Japanese chintan broth, which is like a chicken broth, but also adding elements that I grew up eating, like rosu, which is like a Polish chicken soup, which is quite similar to ramen.”
Alongside the Basque chicken ramen, there’s a pork chashu ramen in that Basque chicken broth with ajitama (soy egg) and Scottish lobster ramen spiced up with sobrassada, which was a hit at the Robin’s Ramen residency.
The hot food, meanwhile, is influenced by Shimokawa Kelly’s background in kaiseki-style cooking, a multi-course meal underpinned by five core cooking techniques: cutting – “which is highly valued in Japanese cuisine” – as well as simmering, steaming, frying and grilling. “They’re all techniques which are used in very intentional ways in Japanese food,” Shimokawa Kelly. “The aspect of this which I believe has a lot of value is … choosing the method of cooking to [best suit] the ingredient.”
As with Kosuge’s ramen, these dishes bring various influences into the fold. There’s a snack-sized buckwheat taco with a meaty chunk of sardine and strawberry kanzuri (fermented chilli paste) that’s the result of a research trip the team took to Japan before Nakimushi was even a sparkle in D’Sylva’s eye. “We have an incredible memory of eating tacos in Okinawa together, because they have a culture of making tacos over there,” Shimokawa Kelly says. It’s made from buckwheat as a nod to soba noodles, and the sardine is prepared in a similar way to nigiri seafood. When Broadsheet visits, other highlights include a brilliantly crisp chicken karaage and steamed Cornish brill in a viscous red vinegar sauce.
Guests enter through a noren curtain, and are greeted by a diminutive open kitchen to their left, and a ground-floor dining room with a communal table and counter seating at right. Upstairs, a bar smashing out highballs and sake sits at one end of the long, narrow room, while guests perch on banquettes that run the length of the space. The distinctive enveloping wood interiors mirror those of Eel Sushi, which D’Sylva calls a “sushi sauna”. But while it riffs on Japanese designs cues, it takes a similar tack as the menu, using European materials.
“We’d just love people to come with an open mind,” Shimokawa Kelly says. “Not expect anything super traditional. We’re just trying to make something which is inherently delicious. For us, it’s super authentic, and it’s just food that I think the Japanese person in us wants to eat.”
Nakimushi
7 Kensington Mall, W8 4EB
02039249246
Hours:
Mon 5.30pm–11pm
Tue to Sun midday–3pm, 5.30pm–11pm
