Dinings

Whilst Mayfair may have two Nobu's, Marylebone has some of the best sushi counters in London, with both Dinings and Defune being amongst the Capital's best places to watch the artistry of the Itamae.

Dinings, which bills itself as Japanese tapas, shares a fair amount with Nobu in the style of food, with more inventive use of sashimi than just a few lumps of perfectly fresh fish and some daikon and wasabi. Sauces are light and each perfectly suited to the type of fish being used. Rolls are inventive, although call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure that foie gras ever deserves to be wrapped in rice, no matter how amazingly cooked it is.

We started this time with tar-tar chips: basically, these are crisps with a small dollop of fish or meat filling. A bit like tiny tacos. The special was a wagu beef one. A single delicous bite of beef and wasabi; crisp on the outside, melting on the in. Like so many things, one is never enough, so a beautiful toro with jalapeno followed. Another sensational mouthful.

Sashimi came in the form of yellow tail with a yuzu garlic sauce and a toro with yuzu ponzu. No I don't have a clue what a yuzu is (let alone a ponzu), but I'd guess it was a citrus, so making the dishes a bit like ceviche, with the acid of the fruit “cooking” the fish ever so slightly. The effect is a sharp sauce that adds bite to the perfect raw fish in a more subtle way than the wasabi and soy sauce staple. I do love this about Japanese food: finding something that you don't know what it is, but finding it is amazing.

A spider roll was excellent. I once managed to convince a dining companion that this was actually a spider: this is clearly made easier when the legs are sticking out the top of the roll, very… More

This place on a quiet street a few minutes away from Edgware Road tube station is a real find. It is tiny. There's a small sushi bar upstairs taking perhaps five seats and then a few tables in the basement. Despite this it works and reminds of you those places in New York where every bit of space is used to the maximum.
And the food is definitely top-notch. The sushi is really good. Generous slices of the freshest fish on perfectly done rice. There's usually a very good selection every time we've been with an intriguing array of specials. Last time I was there, the chef had clearly managed to get a lot of good sea urchin in and these were presented in all sorts of ways. There is often a lot of excellent king crab and very good otoro. The only thing not to my taste is perhaps a lot of the specials sometimes use truffles — which I don't like with sushi — or can sometimes be overpowered by yuzu so that you lose the taste of the fish. But other people don't seem to mind.