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Matsuri London
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Reviews
Japanese in London
- Holborn
71 High Holborn
, Holborn, London, WC1V 6TP
+44 (0) 20 7430 1970
http://www.matsuri-restaurant.com
Matsuri restaurants are upmarket Japanese outlets serving dishes such as sushi and sashimi. They offer a set dinner menu with 8 courses as well as a range of smaller meals.
Tags:
bar, cocktails, japanese, sashimi
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Matsuri
London
Reviews
Dude, let's eat Teppanyaki! - Most people head straight for their local mystery meat doner house for a kebab when they are drunk. Not my friends! After a few gin & tonics and perhaps a jazz cigarette or two we found ourselves idly stumbling through Holborn in search of sustenance.
We chanced upon Matsuri, an upmarket Japanese joint offering both conventional and Teppanyaki style service. Whilst something of a bizarre choice for a boozed fuelled dining excursion we concured with our friend's loud proclamation and ventured on it.
Unfortuantely they couldn't accommodate us at the Teppanyaki table and we sat down in the main dining room. The menu was pretty generic with the usual suspects, tempura, sashimi and various teryaki style dishes making an appearance.
We had a selection of tempura and the best part of it all was the lobster. Sweet and rich as you expect it to be, the best part was the feather thin tempura coating that had a brulee like snap to it that I haven't tasted outside of Tokyo. The sashimi however did nothing to change my belief that there is no such thing as good sushi in the UK. Unless you have your fish flown in that morning from Japan then it is never going to stand up to the quality of ingredient you can get in other parts of the world. However for British sashimi it was pretty good. The yellowtail especially worth a mention.
We then delved into the Wagyu menu and had a selection of sushi and seared beef. I understand that they now rear Wagyu in Europe so it has a slightly less inflated price tag to the almost mythical Kobe. Domestic Wagyu is 80% there and in my book that is good enough for me and we motored through nearly two hundred quid's worth without a second thought.
Finally dessert. One word, avoid. The dessert menu took traditional desserts from around the world and flavoured them all with green tea. The green tea crepe was all crepe and no filling and tasted like sour cardboard. The green tea tiramisu was also disgusting. Yeuch.
Overall this place was disappointing, largely due to the lack of decent ingredients to make high end Japanese food. The waiting staff didn't really know much about their menu and seemed a little put out by my constant (albeit drunken) enquiries about the menu. If the dining experience was bad drunk, then goodness knows what I'd have made of it sober!
26-12-07
Tags:
japanese, lobster, sashimi, teppanyaki, wagyu
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