umai*saturday

sake no*hana  is one of those so-so restaurants. while a fan of hakka*san, find yau*atcha and sake no*hana hit and miss, and meh at best. however, succumbed to the siren song of the umai*saturday set lunch because it was £37 for a five course, including a bottle of sparkling sake. revealing my plebeian palate, same sake retails for £10-12 at the japan centre, and £20 (?) at matsuri st james. so if you do the math, deducting £20 to enjoy sake with meal in restaurant setting (haha) is good value. on the other hand, the mister laughs and tells me if i bought the sake to drink at home and blew the remaining £27 + 20% on japanese take out, i'd get more food. can you tell he's a sake cup half full kind of guy?

the meal was o-k? found it hard to understand the waitress. there was a choice between beef tataki (pictured) or yellowtail sashimi for starters. i picked one of each because there were two of us. she told me i could only pick one, despite me pointing out that for the choice of main (beef sukiyaki) the menu stated it was to be shared by two. there was no similarly explicit instruction by the choice of starter. so i felt a bit cheated that the tataki was a small portion and still had to be split by two. what would've happened if it'd been a three top? or solo diner?

the beef sukiyaki came with candyfloss that the waitress poured the stock over. while theatrical and dramatic, the end effect was a syrupy sweet stock. now i appreciate that umami is in and all but uhh don't give me sweet beef?

the sushi platter at the end was hands down my favourite part, but that's not saying very much. as if the chef realised how the small portions wouldn't satisfy and decided to throw carbs at us to make up for it. 

experienced some meal remorse at the end of it. you know the feeling like how you've wasted precious tummy space and time on a substandard meal? yeah. i get that with burgers, too. burger remorse is the worst. strangely, it's doesn't happen after a maccas meal. maybe because maccas always does it for me. that's where i echo the mister's russian friend D. we were at jean george's at trump tower and the tasting menu, he declared he'd have maccas any day. speaking of D, we'd a good laugh over the weekend that while i spent sunday (saturday?) choosing our annual christmas card, the mister was cutting deals with russians. wouldn't have it any other way :)

some more photos from the lovely autumn afternoon in mayfair, if you'd like to see... incidentally also when the mister got chatted up by the floor staff at the paul smith flagship because he'd styled his jcrew trousers just so.