Japanese restaurant wins London award

7 March 2008

London’s best new restaurant award from The Good Food Guide London goes to Japanese “temple of cool” Sake No Hana.

Beating off strong competition from the likes of Mayfair’s Wild Honey and Notting Hill’s Café Anglais, Alan Yau’s latest opening has produced more feedback from Good Food Guide readers* than any other recent new opening. One described it as “pure and unadulterated joy for people who understand and love Japanese food.”

The restaurant’s design is stunning; perfectly trained staff are “superb” (the expert sake sommelier, in particular, has received more rave reader comments than any other sommelier in the country); and the kaiseki cooking is of a very high quality.

Sake No Hana is without doubt a special occasion restaurant and certainly not cheap, but The Good Food Guide London isn’t just about expensive dining. It has given a Best value restaurant award to Tom Ilic, Battersea, which looks and feels more like a neighbourhood bistro than a “serious” restaurant but produces imaginative, gutsy, big-on-flavour cooking at very reasonable prices.

The ten award-winners are:

• Best new restaurant: Sake No Hana, Mayfair.
• Best value for money: Tom Ilic, Battersea.
• Best budget restaurant: Viet Grill, Shoreditch. Food is fresh, fragrant and incredibly cheap - it's hard to believe that most dishes cost between £3-£6.
• Best gastropub: Carpenter’s Arms, Hammersmith. Daily changing, no-frills British menu, good value for money, friendly staff, lovely sheltered garden – a perfect local.
• Best set menu: Wild Honey, Mayfair. Three courses for £15.50 for food of this quality makes it one of the best lunch deals in town.
• Best vegetarian: Manna, Primrose Hill. One of Britain’s first vegetarian restaurants is still one of its best.
• Best for breakfast: Roast, London Bridge. A strong British-produce ethos extends to the wonderful breakfasts.
• Best wine list: The Square, Mayfair. Astonishing in every department and not everything costs an arm and a leg either.
• Best fish restaurant: One-O-One, Knightsbridge. Creative and confident fish dishes, full of twists and turns and surprising techniques.
• Best up-and-coming chef: Tristan Mason, formerly of Orrery, Marylebone. This young chef is one to watch. He allows modern ideas to impinge freely on classic French cooking to stunning effect.

Elizabeth Carter, editor of The Good Food Guide London, says:

“All our award winners offer something more than just very good food. While décor ranged from downright simple to architectural high jinks, service was judged outstanding at all of them, and even at the very expensive end, readers felt they had value for money. Sheer enjoyment also played its part. In the end a good restaurant is one where you choose to go back a second time and we think all these restaurants will attract loyal customers.”

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